Important Public Announcement from Jega About Saturday’s Voting
The INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, has on Tuesday laid down the processes and procedures for the election and for the release of results by presiding officers.
In a stakeholders'summit with political parties, he explained that accreditation will begin by 8am on Saturday and end by 1pm with the last person of the queue. Voting itself will begin at 1:30 and end when the last person in the queue has voted.
He said: “On March 28, three ballot boxes will be used in each of the polling/voting points. Ballot boxes with red cover is for putting a thumb printing ballot paper by a voter for the presidential election, ballot box with a black cover is putting thumb printing ballot paper by a voter for the senatorial election and the green ballot box is for putting thumb printed ballot paper by a voter for the House of Representatives.
“Each ballot paper has corresponding colour stripes to assist voters in putting the right ballot paper in the right ballot box. For each polling /voting point, there is a designated official called overseer, whose primary job is to ensure that voters put the right ballot paper into the right ballot box. Political parties need to factor this into their campaigns to minimise putting the ballot paper into the wrong ballot box.”
Sorting of votes will happen twice, to ensure than wrongly-placed ballot papers are removed and put in the right ballot boxes – the first sorting – and to count the number of votes cast by the voters – second sorting.
“At the end of the sorting and counting of the ballot papers, the results are to be announced to the rearing of all and a result poster is to be completed and pasted at the polling units. Copies of the result sheets are to be given a accredited party agents who are present while the original is to be conveyed to the ward level coalition centre by the presiding officer accompanied by the security agents and the party agents.
“At the ward level collation centre, if there are complaints and/or evidence of alteration of accreditation figures on the result sheets, the information on accreditation saved on the card readers used would be used by the collation officer to decide on the case.”
Hard copies of the results sheet will then be scanned, converted to PDF and uploaded to a database which will be available for public download on the INEC website. This is in pursuance of transparency and accuracy.
He has promised Nigerians a credible election.
source: http://www.nigerianbulletin.com/