The Former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, while sharing his opinions concerning the coming election, took a digression to express his thoughts concerning the new naira policy, stating that it was wrongly timed and it will affect INEC and the well-scheduled election due to its lingering scarcity.
Prof. Attahiru Jega issued this statement while speaking during an interview with TrustTV News. He also described the ongoing naira redesign policy as ill-timed, adding it might impact negatively on the credibility of polls.
He said that, “From my experience, cash is required because at the time I did the election in 2015, we deployed 750,000 ad-hoc staff. And this category of staff are required to spend the night at where’s called RAC, that’s Registration Area Centre.
Cash is a necessary requirement for the operational readiness of INEC on Election Day because electoral officers, security agencies, and other hard-husk staff will be paid their feeding allowances.” In cash, due to restrictions in some places where there will be no banks, talk less of electronic transfer, he added.
“They will also be there at their various polling units, maybe from 6:00am until hopefully 7:00pm or even longer. So they need to have something to eat. All these people will need cash, because there are most likely no ATM or POS machine to withdraw.
The timing is very unfortunate and was not carefully thought of before implementing and we are already seeing the implications.
@StatesmanBlog said that, “From my own point of view, I totally agree with what Prof. Attahiru jega said. The naira policy is badly timed and it is going to affect the election negatively.