Minister dissatisfied over polls in Kwara

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(Nigeria) The Minister of National Planning, Dr Suleiman Abubakar, has said there were irregularities in the conduct of the Presidential and National Assembly elections in Kwara State.
Abubakar, who said this during an interview with newsmen in Ilorin, described the exercise as ‘a tragedy.’
He said the shortcomings, if not addressed in future elections would have negative implications on the electoral process in the country.
“The process of accreditation was faulty; the card reader in most cases was not working hence the recourse to the manual accreditation.
"Using manually accrediting voters attests to what we have been saying in PDP that the card reader introduced by INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, at this point in time is a misplaced priority.
"It is obvious to Nigerians now that the card reader did not really work and as such it created room for a lot of irregularities in accreditation process”, he told newsmen.
Abubakar alleged that security agencies connived with the opposition party to carry out the malpractice.
“For instance, where you have about 1,800 voters to one policeman how will he contain the crowd?
“This country has a long way to go. Security men were inadequate and in some cases, they were not there at all, ``he said.
Abubakar said residential houses were used as polling units, a development, he said contravened some provisions of electoral laws.
"When I insisted that it was a violation of the law, Jega promised to get back to me; he did not get back to me and he did not do anything about it.
Abubakar alleged that votes declared for the presidential candidate in favour of APC in one of the voting units was more than the number of accredited voters in the unit.
"While we await other results and other reactions, what we saw yesterday was no election.  It was indeed a mockery of democracy. I want to assure you that it will not last; any house built on sands will not stand the test of time,” he said. 

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