INEC: How we suffered 41 attacks in 2 years — Yakubu

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that its offices and facilities were attacked 41 times in the last two years.

Chairman of the commission, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, said this on Thursday in Abuja at an emergency meeting with the security agencies under the auspices of the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on election security (ICCES).

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According to him, nine of the incidents happened in 2019 and 21 cases in 2020.

“In the last four weeks, 11 offices of the commission were either set ablaze or vandalized.

“Two of these incidents were caused by Boko Haram and bandits’ attacks while 10 resulted from thuggery during the election and post-election violence,” Yakubu said.

He, however, said that the majority of the attacks, being 29 out of the 41, were unrelated to election or electoral activities.

He added that 18 of them occurred during the #EndSARS protests in October 2020 while 11 attacks were organised by “unknown gunmen” and “hoodlums”.

The ICCES emergency meeting, which was originally scheduled for last Monday, was rescheduled after the death of the former Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt-Gen Ibrahim Attahiru, who was a member of the ICCES.

5,346 officials to be deployed

The INEC boss also said that the commission would create 2,673 registration centres and deploy 5,346 officials for the exercise along with expensive voter enrollment machines.

He said that this was for the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise scheduled for 28 June 2021 to enable Nigerians who have attained 18 years and those who did not register previously to do so.

He added that in the next nine months, two major elections will be conducted, being the Anambra State Governorship election scheduled for 6 November 2021 to be followed by the end-of-tenure elections for 68 Area Council constituencies in the FCT holding on 12 February 2022.

“These major elections will be followed by the Ekiti and Osun State governorship elections ahead of the 2023 General Election which is just 632 days away.

“Similarly, registered voters who wish to change their voting locations and those who wish to correct their names and other details on their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) can do so.

“All these activities require security, thereby adding to the urgency and importance of this meeting,” he added.

The National Security Adviser (NSA) and Co-Chairman of ICCES, Maj-Gen Babagana Monguno, and the Acting Inspector General of Police, Alkali Baba Usman, in separate comments promised to take decisive actions to stop the attacks and prevent future occurrences.