By Abimbola Ogunnaike
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu, has assured that today, Saturday, 25 February, 2023, Presidential and National Assembly Elections would be concluded and a winner declared as quickly as possible.
Yakubu made the promise on Friday, 24 February, 2023, in Abuja at the second press briefing on preparations for the 2023 general elections at the national collation centre situated at the International Conference Centre (ICC), Abuja.
Recall that in the previous election circles, presidential results and winner were formally declared after two days of the elections.
Assuring that the commission will speed up the process this year, Yakubu said, “We will ensure that result declaration will be done speedily. I can’t put a finger on the number of days or hours it will take, but it will be done speedily. We are aware of the anxiety and the need for us to conclude the process quickly, it will be concluded quickly.”
The INEC boss also assured that the process will not suffer any encumbrance due to the recent cash crunch triggered by the recent naira redesign policy of the CBN.
“It is not all our operations that are paid for by cash. In fact, the bulk of our procurement for both goods and services is done electronically, but we need a small amount of money to pay for the unbanked that render critical services, particularly at the local level,” Yakubu said.
While expressing satisfaction with the progress made on the movement of materials to the various locations around the country, the INEC boss said, “Having deployed these materials to local government areas, we are today devolving the deployment to Registration Area Centres (RACs) so that early morning (today) the polls will open as planned.”
