Kaduna State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Abdullahi Kaugama, has warned that no election would be conducted without card reader.
Addressing a joint press conference on Saturday’s governorship and State Assembly elections with Ahmad Abdulrahman, Kaduna State Police Commissioner, the REC said the result of any election conducted without the use of the card reader would be rejected.
He said the challenges that were witnessed during the presidential and National Assembly elections had been addressed, assuring that elections would commence on time as scheduled.
“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 institutions.
“Our staff are people of high integrity who are capable to conduct the election process. We sourced them from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, so they are capable for the election jobs,” Kaugama said.
He said all election materials had been deployed to the 23 local governments in the state assuring that issues of late arrival of election materials and malfunctioning card readers had been addressed and elections would commence at every polling unit by 8:00a.m.
On his part, Ahmad Abdulrahman, the Kaduna State Police Commissioner warned that those who had no business to move around on election day should stay off the streets.
He also said food vendors were banned from all polling units to avoid politicians who would want to capitalise on that to buy votes.
He said adequate security measures had been put in place to ensure peaceful conduct of the elections.
“We have finished our deployment, we have banned food vendors from polling unit 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,” he said.
“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” the police commissioner said.
