I won’t share my duty as Presidential election returning officer with anyone- INEC chair

Chidi Samuel|

Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Thursday, said that his role as the returning officer for the presidential election is sacrosanct and he is prepared to share that role with anyone.

The INEC chairman who was reacting to the criticisms that trailed the appointment of Amina Zakari as the head of the committee on collation centre stated this during an interactive meeting with Catholic Bishops in Abuja.

Yakubu told the Bishops that he remains the only returning officer who would announce results for the presidential election.

The INEC boss who earlier on Thursday assured that forthcoming elections will not be postponed at a meeting with political party’s and stakeholders equally urged Nigerians to always draw the attention of the commission to any infraction in the national voter register for rectification

“The chairman of INEC is the chief returning officer for the presidential election and I am not going to share that responsibility with anyone.”

“We have been doing so consistently. After the last one, we received only a few comments from the states, I think 48,000 out of 84 million registered voters.

“Part of the difficulty is that we are very careful if someone says that one person is dead, because of the experience the commission had in 2015.

“We received a letter from one particular political party that a candidate was dead and they submitted a death certificate obtained from a government hospital. They also went to court, swore to an affidavit and his family also attested to the fact that the candidate was dead. They filed all these documents at the commission. A week later, the supposedly dead candidate turned up and said he was alive.”