INEC Dumps Card Readers, Extends Voting to Sunday

For all their hype, the INEC smart card readers never lived up to their billing. The machines which were supposed to serve the purpose of accrediting voters and limiting time honored malpractice concerns, were malfunctioning as early as 8am, Saturday when President Jonathan waltzed into Otuoke in Bayelsa State to get himself and his wife accredited.

Card reader malfunction has also been reported in several polling units across Nigeria and in most cases, voters had not been accredited after 3pm local time. As a consequence, the electoral commission has done away with the controversial machines and shifted the vote by another day.

Accreditation, it has said, would now be accomplished manually.