he Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has assured Nigerians that there won’t be delay in declaration of results of Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, gave the assurance at a media briefing in Abuja on Friday.
Recall that the 2019 presidential elections result was formally declared after two days of the elections.
But Yakubu said 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 suffer any encumbrance due to the recent cash crunch triggered by the naira re-design policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“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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