INEC: Credible Voters’ Register, Our Major Priority

Written by This Day Thursday, 13 May 2010

New Acting Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prince Adedeji Soyebi, yesterday in Abuja,  said the major priorities of the electoral body remain the early preparations for next year's general elections. He noted that measures to improve the rating of the operations of the Commission  would include enhanced accessibility of information by the general public.

The new INEC helmsman, who was speaking at a meeting with senior officials of the Commission at its headquarters following his appointment Tuesday,  disclosed that the 'purification' of the voters register used under the tenure of the immediate past electoral chief, Professor Maurice Iwu, is paramount to the preparations for the 2011 polls.

“The major task ahead of us right now is the full sensitization and of course, what we call the purification of the voters register," Soyebi said. According to him, "We have used the register in quite a number of bye-elections, we have not used some since the 2007 elections and the greatest task as I said, is to make sure that we produce a voters’ register that is very credible which can be used for the (2011) elections."

Explaining his mission and the task ahead of the Commission, the new INEC chief  said : “We are here this afternoon, very mindful of the fact that the task ahead of us is very, very enormous if one considers the fact that we are going to hold elections in less than one year.  You will all agree with me that the task of the commission this particular time around is very, very enormous.

We are here this afternoon to fine-tune our strategies and then to make sure that there is continuity in that very noble plan which we have placed in front of Nigerians as far as the 2011 election is concerned.

“What we have in focus here is the 2011 elections and what we are going to talk about today is a way of fast tracking or at least a way of sanitizing the processes that will lead to a very credible election. We have made plans to make sure that we have a very free and fair election come 2011,”  he said.

Soyebi also assured Nigerians of the ability of his Commission to face the challenges ahead and conduct a free, fair and credible poll, next year. "We are determined that on our own part that we have very credible elections... We are going to be open, we are going to be very involving, we are going to expand our coast in terms of stakeholders and of course, we are going to be very honest with the whole country,” he  assured.