The Independent National Electoral Commission is not leaving anything to chance as it has beefed up security around the smart card readers to be used during the March 28 and April 11 elections. The adoption of the card readers for the general election has attracted a lot of controversies.

On March 14, there was a fire incident at the warehouse of the electoral body in Abuja which lasted for two hours. Non-sensitive materials such as envelopes, voter education materials and bags for conveying electoral materials to registration areas were completely burnt.

This has raised fears in many quarters about the safety of the card readers with six days left to the March 28 presidential election.

The Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Mr. Kayode Idowu, told disclosed that measures had been put in place to secure the card readers.‎
He said, "They are very secure from arson, stealing, vandalism or any other effort to disrupt the elections.
"It is not only card readers we are using for these elections. We are using a lot of other materials. We are also using ballot boxes, cubicles, etc. Those are all election materials and they are secured and are well protected. Where they are now, they are safe.
"INEC deploys these materials along the lines of the structures. We deploy from the national headquarters to the state offices. The state offices deploy to the council offices. The council offices deploy to the registration area centres, which in turn deploy to the polling units. They cannot be intercepted on the way; they are not sent by post."

Checks by our correspondents around the 36 states and Abuja showed that the card readers had already been deployed to the states.

However, the actual location of these cards is only known to the Resident Electoral Commissioners and a few trusted staff of the commission under whose watch the cards are.

This development, according to some of the RECs, is born out of anticipated threats such as theft and arson against the safety of the card readers.

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