According to the timetable, the presidential and National Assembly elections would come first on Saturday, February 14, 2015. That of the governors and members of the 36 state houses of assembly are scheduled for, Saturday, February 28, 2015.
The Buhari Vanguard in a statement issued yesterday by its Chairman Jasper Azuatalam, agreed with the General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) who had opposed the election timetable released by INEC.
The group said that if the general election is organised on the same day, "there will be fewer cases of snatching of ballot boxes and the use of political thugs to rig elections. This will also save cost."
"We do not see any harm in casting five ballot papers on the same day and collating same. If we can cast three ballot papers and collate same in one day, then we can also cast 5 ballots and collate same in one day with almost the same logistics and cost," the group said.
According to INEC's guidelines on allocation of voters to polling units and voting points, the verified number of polling units (PU) is approximately 120,000 nationwide, and the polling units with more than 300 registered voters are to be sub-divided into voting points for ease of accreditation and balloting.
"By this guideline, each of the 120,000 polling units shall have three officers making a total of 360,000 ad hoc staff. The 36,000 voting points shall also have two ad hoc staff each totalling 72,000 ad hoc staff. There shall be a supervisory presiding office and an assistant to manage every 25 polling units totaling 9,600 ad hoc staff.
"Assuming the presiding officers, clerks and assistants are paid a minimum of N10,000 per day, they will receive a total about N2 billion. If we also assume that the supervisory presiding officers and their assistants are paid N20,000 each, they will receive a total amount of about N200 million. This means that all local ad hoc staff will receive about N2.2 billion each election day," the group said.
The group said that considering the cost of logistics in vehicles, fuel, and materials, which will run into billions of naira, INEC will save about 35 per cent of the total amount it spent to conduct the 2011 general election if the 2015 elections are conducted same day.
The Buharu Vanguard "strongly rejected" the idea to use any part of the 2015 general election as a test-run "as all parts of the 2015 elections are of equal important."
The group's members said that the 2011 general election, the 2013 Anambra gubernatorial poll and the forthcoming elections in Ekiti and Osun states, should be enough test-run for the INEC to by prepared for 2015.
The group further argued that the turnover at the presidential election would be considerably smaller should the election be conducted in several days.
"This is because contestants for lower elections like the state House of Assembly elections are closer to the people and as such interests are high at the grassroots leading to high turnout of voters. This is different from the presidential election where many people at the grassroots feel they are not directly affected or know the contestants in many cases and as such grassroots interest and participation are low," the group said.
The NEF has also advocated that all elections in 2015 should hold simultaneously.
NEF spokesman Professor Ango Abdullahi told reporters in Bauchi at the weekend that the timetable released by the INEC could give room for manipulation.
He added that conducting all the elections on the same day would allow to avoid electoral malpractices and save cost.
Abdullahi said that the forthcoming polls must be free and fair in order to avert violence.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment