INEC admits incompetence among some staff, insists Card Readers a must for guber poll

Communities which frustrate the use of card readers during the governorship and state Assembly polls will have their votes cancelled, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says.

The electoral body gave the warning through its Kano State INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, Prof. Risqua Arabu, in an interview.

The Kano State REC also revealed that INEC had discovered some cases of incompetence among its staff during the last presidential and National Assembly polls.

“There were few challenges we experienced from the last presidential elections and we took note of the complaints that came.

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“What most people didn’t know was that in a number of polling units, members of our staff were forced to stop using card readers by communities.

“The law is very clear and our guidelines clearly state that where communities deliberately avoid the use of card readers, they score zero and that is what we did and this led to a number of cancellations,” he said, adding, “We had a few cases of incompetence displayed by some of our staff. We have reviewed them and we have replaced some of them, we have also reviewed our strategy of monitoring the use of the card readers.”

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