ELECTORAL FRAUD: We won’t mind sacking all INEC staff, recruit afresh –Yakubu

Ahead 2019 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has said that the commision would not mind sacking all staff and recruiting new ones in order to rid the body of corruption.

He stated this during a quarterly consultative meeting with journalists in Abuja on Tuesday where he disclosed that the EFCC was once again probing INEC officials in 20 other states.

EFCC had earlier been prosecuting 205 INEC officials in 16 states for allegedly receiving part of the N23 billion reportedly disbursed by a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani-Alison Madueke to manipulate the outcome of 2015 presidential election.

“I want to say that this is the first time in the history of our elections that in one fell swoop , 205 officials were disciplined based on the interim report we received from the EFCC covering 16 states.

“Under the terms and conditions of service what we can do is to interdict them which means placing them on half salary and suspending them from work until their innocence or guilt is established. The last report covered 16 states and only last week I heard they had started prosecuting them.

“However, after receiving the report, we had a discussion with the EFCC and told them that for the outstanding 20 states, they should not submit any interim report to INEC but just prosecute them.

“Once they are taken to court, we activate the provisions of the terms and conditions of service. Whatever we need to do we will do even if it means getting rid of everybody in the commission and recruiting afresh for the purpose of the 2019 elections. We are committed to doing so,” Yakubu said.

On the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), the INEC chairman revealed that the South-South geopolitical zone has recorded the highest number of people who took part in the exercise between the months of April and September 2017.

On the breakdown of the CVR Yakubu said that about 667,103 persons have registered to vote in the South- South geopolitical zone. States in the zone are Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo and Rivers.

The South-west came in second with 532, 172 persons registered to vote. It is followed by the North-west, with seven states, which has 477, 056 registered voters.

The North-central is fourth with 374, 923 while the South-east with five states has 352,942 voters. In the North-east, 350, 398 registered.

He also disclosed that Rivers State has the highest number of registered voters with 151, 398 while Lagos came second with 144, 076. Ondo recorded the lowest number with 29, 766.

In total, about 2, 786,405 persons registered to vote between April and September. However, only 108, 752 had come forward to claim their cards.

The INEC boss, who said that eight million voter cards remain unclaimed, lamented that out of that number Lagos accounted for about one million.

“Some of you will also recall that Lagos has recorded the least collection of PVCs not in terms of numbers but in relation to the numbers that registered. Out of the eight plus million PVCs still uncollected nationwide, over a million are uncollected in Lagos,” he said.

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