Kaduna INEC, Police Read Riot Act, Say No Card Reader, No Vote

Ahead of the governorship and House of Assembly elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Kaduna State and the State Police Command have warned voters not to approach any polling centre without their PVC.

The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Alhaji Kaugama Abdullahi has warned that there will be no voting where there is no card readers.
The State Commissioner of Police, Ahmad Abdulrahman also warned those who has no business to move around on election day to stay off the streets.

Both the INEC boss and the Police Commissioner addressed a joint press briefing on Friday.

Abdullahi said all INEC Ad-hoc staff were drawn from higher institutions and that they are men of integrity who are equally capable of handling the election processes.

He assured that the issue of late arrival of election materials to some polling units and wards have been taken care of, adding that 8,012 card readers have been dispatched for the elections.

The REC said, “The card reader is election itself, no card reader, no voting. This is just to let you know that card reader operators were given refresher training.

“We have 34, 000 Ad-hoc staff to conduct the elections, and out of this figure, 10,000 staff are members of the NYSC, while the rest number are from other higher insitutions.

“Our staff are people of high integrity who capable to conduct the election process. We sourced them from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, so they are capable for the election jobs”.

According to the police commissioner, “We have finished our deployment, we have banned food vendor from poll units areas in order to stop them from the likelihood of accommodating vote-buyers.

“We have ordered for good number of helicopters to hover around the State during the election.

“We will pick anybody wandering about without PVC and keep him or her where necessary until the election is over.

“We have equally banned members of the vigilante from coming out with dangerous weapons during the election. In fact, we have arrested 34 of them so far, they look deadly”.