The meeting scheduled to hold between Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Attahiru Jega, and the nation’s 37 Resident Electoral Commissioners, initially slated for Wednesday, has been postponed to March 11.
The meeting was to let Mr. Jega and his national commissioners receive feedback on the distribution of permanent voter cards in states of the federation, and discuss other preparations INEC is making for the forthcoming general elections.
INEC has announced it will, March 7, begin testing of the card readers , which are to be used for accreditation of voters, across the states.
It was gathered that INEC shifted the meeting so RECs could provide feedbacks on the testing of card readers on the new dates.
The Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Kayode Idowu, confirmed the postponement as well and the new date of the meeting.
He explained that the meeting was not one between Mr. Jega and the RECs but the Commission’s “long scheduled operational meeting” slated to finalise preparations for the elections.
Before the meeting was postponed, there were suggestions that some of the RECs loyal to the Peoples Democratic Party-controlled Federal Government might pass a vote of no confidence on Mr. Jega.
The vote of no confidence was speculated to prepare the ground for government to remove Mr. Jega from office.
President Goodluck Jonathan has said he has no plan to sack the INEC chief except he does something wrong.
But Mr. Idowu maintained that the purported planned vote of no confidence was not in the agenda of the meeting and not the reason for postponement.
He said the meeting was postponed so that the RECs could give Mr. Jega feedbacks on the card readers testing exercise billed to start on Saturday.
