20100808
Vanguard

Abuja — The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday said it would issue next week the guidelines for the forthcoming 2011 general elections even as it revealed that about 360,000 personnel would be recruited for the exercise.

The chairman of the INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega revealed this when he hosted a team of Zimbabwean soldiers from the Zimbabwean Staff Collage who came to understudy how the commission operates.

According to Prof. Jega, releasing the election guidelines was in tandem with the electoral process which according to him indicates that by the end of November, the issue of compiling a new voters' register would have been concluded while the upgrading is expected to end by the end of December, 2010.

"We want to open operational guidelines of conducting the elections within the constitutional accepted time and framework, we want to get it right and to do that we have to take a look at the past and that is why we decided to review the voters' register which I consider to be dubious and must be changed if we to get a credible election in 2011" the INEC chairman said.

He stated that concerted effort would be put in place to ensure that the citizens participated in the process adding that they must be made know that their votes will count.

According to Jega, about 120,000 Direct Data Capture (DDC) machines would beused in all the 120,000 polling units across the country; this means that each machined would be deployed to each polling centre for the registration of eligible voters, this he said is to save time.

Prof. Jega said that International Observers are needed as long as the entireprocess was open even as he stated that their roles must be defined so that it will translate from observing to interfering.

Earlier, the leader of the Zimbabwean staff College, Brig. Thomas Moyo said they were in Nigeria as part of their routine visit to other African countries where they have to understudy about their activities and its geo-political arrangement.

He said they were happy to be in Nigeria because they share a common culture and history with adding that they have learnt enough to help the Zimbabwean institute.