Jonathan’s card possibly damaged, says Jega

Attahiru Jega, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), says President Goodluck Jonathan’s failed accreditation by the voter card reader may have occurred due to possible damage to the card.

Nevertheless, Jega, who was speaking with the Nigerian television Authority (NTA) on Saturday night in a brief review of the day’s accreditation and voting processes all over the country, described the occurrence as “a national embarrassment” and apologised to the president.

“We thank God because, in general, the elections have been peaceful. The turnout has been quite large and voters have been patient in exercising their franchise,” he said.

“As we know, man proposes and God disposes; and we have experienced some challenges. In general, we believe that in spite of the challenges. things have gone very well.

“What happened in the case of Mr. President is regrettable and a national embarrassment. We have apologised for what happened. It is possible his card was damaged.”

Jega added that despite the commission’s challenges, it believes that the card readers had done the best for credible elections.

“The card reader still has substantial credibility together with the permanent voters cards in these elections,” he said.

“What happened in FCT is one of those things you can call a fluke. Regrettably, in FCT, the transporters that brought the workers to the station declined to take them to their units.

“That caused a lot of delay and we had to speak to the national president of the union to intervene in the matter. There is not a single election we have postponed in any state for lack of result sheets. The only PU were we said they can come back tomorrow and do elections was the PU that at 1pm, the process had not begun.

“For the election that we rescheduled to April 11, it will be done with governorship elections.”

On the INEC website, which was hacked but later restored, he said: The hack did not disrupt our plans and we were able to restore the website.

“What I want to stress is that no database on the website is compromised, but only the information on the website.”