This is as he warned that any community that refused using the card reader may not have their votes counted.
Iloh who spoke to reporters at the INEC headquarters on Thursday said that the commission has enough technical manpower to address any technical challenges that may arise from the card reader.
According to Iloh, “Our card readers are highly functional. The battery lifespan has been improved that they can last for 48hrs. When politicians want to circumvent issues, they create problem. But this time around they know that it won’t be easy for them. Any community that refuses the use of card reader shall have a score of zero and their votes may not count.
“Please, I am appealing to all citizens, stakeholders of Abia State to please make use of the card reader. It is a very cardinal instrument. We classified it as a sensitive instrument. For in a special case where one of the card readers starts malfunctioning, we have reserves in all the RAC and Local Government Areas in this state. We have reserves.
“The RAC techs are there. If a card reader is mal-functional in a particular unit, the polling officer should call the RAC tech or the supervisory officer there. The senior supervisory officer should as a matter of fact call the RAC tech that will come and rectify them. We have provided them with vehicles to enable them move around to rectify issues. That the card reader failed to identify one person doesn’t render it invalid. If it becomes malfunction and the technical staff couldn’t effect the repairs, they will replace the card reader.
“For Aba North and Aba South Federal Constituency, there will be a rerun and there will be a rerun in Abia South Senatorial district. We have scheduled them to go on at the same time with the elections for the state house of assembly and Governorship. We are doing this to ensure that we don’t have influences from adjoining local governments. Everybody should be in his or her wards to vote and then do the things that are necessary to keep our democracy moving.
“There was a meeting on Wednesday between the Inter-agency Consultative Committee on Election Security and Inter-party Advisory Council. We met and sorted out identified areas that we could be classified as flash points and security agencies will focus more in such areas. We are calling on you; journalists to please let us know where you observe things going wrong.
“However, I am promising that this time around everything is going to be set according to specification.”
On the case of over voting as witnessed in the just concluded Presidential and National Assembly election, Iloh said “where the card reader and the manual votes failed to correspond, it is not going to be a problem. The consequences are there. So every stakeholder should work to ensure that the card reader and the manual voting correspond. It doesn’t see where a community will reject the use of card reader and conduct manual voting.
“The result for Saturday election will be announced by Saturday night or by Sunday morning by the special grace of God. It is not going to be delayed. We have perfected our arrangement to make that this things run parallel. The structure for the collation this Saturday’s results are very clear to us and may not be known to you people as of now.”
Iloh stated five hundred and seventy four candidates from 43 political parties would feature in March 9, Governorship and House of Assembly elections in Abia State.
He added that 39 of the candidates are for governorship election while 535 candidates are for the House of Assembly poll.
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