The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has assured that the results of Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections will be declared as quickly as possible.
Prof. Yakubu, stated this at his media
briefing in Abuja on Friday.
The 2019 presidential elections result was
formally declared after two days of the elections.
Prof. Yakubu promised the commission will
speed up the process this year.
“I just want to say that we will ensure that
it (result declaration) will be done speedily. I can’t put a finger on the
number of days or number of hours it will take, but it will be done speedily.
We are aware of the anxiety and the need for us to conclude the process
quickly, it will be concluded quickly,” he said.
Yakubu also assured that the process will not
be burdened by crisis resulting from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)
re-design policy.
“It is
not all our operations that are paid for by cash. In fact, the bulk of our
procurement for both goods and services is done electronically, but we need a
small amount of money to pay for the unbanked who render critical services,
particularly at the local level.
“We anticipated this challenge and interacted
with the Central Bank, they promised us that the little amount we need to pay
for services in cash, they will make the funds available to us and they have
done so.
“And these funds have already been accessed
by our state offices for elections which is why the movement of personnel and
materials in the last couple of days has gone on unhindered. So, I must give
credit for our relationship with the Central Bank in that regard. So, the
process won’t suffer any encumbrance as a result,” Yakubu said.
The INEC boss expressed satisfaction on the
progress being made with the movement of materials to the various locations
around the country.
He said, “Having deployed these materials to
the Local Government Areas, we are today devolving the deployment to the
Registration Area Centers (RACs) so that early morning tomorrow the polls will
open as planned. These RACs have been activated and election duty staff have
started arriving in them.”
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