By Rafiu Ajakaye
LAGOS
Nigeria's official electoral commission has reiterated its commitment to holding general elections as scheduled on Feb. 14, adding that preparations for the poll are now in top gear.
"The commission is ready and planning and has kept faith with the schedule as earlier announced," Kayode Idowu, a spokesman for the commission, told The Anadolu Agency.
"The call for election shift is not something that the commission is partaking in," he insisted.
Nigerians will go to the polls on Feb. 14 to elect a president and members of the federal parliament.
While 14 candidates will vie for the presidency, the poll is seen by many to be essentially a race between incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler.
Buhari is running on the ticket of the opposition All Progressive Congress, an amalgam of political interests that have come together in an attempt to wrest power from the People's Democratic Party, which has ruled the country since its return to democracy in 1999.
Jonathan's National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki, a retired senior military officer, recently suggested that the poll should be delayed because millions of voters had not yet received their permanent voter cards.
The opposition immediately rejected the proposal, dismissing it as an "ill-advised" plot by the ruling party and government to hold onto power.
A few days later, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Nigeria, where he held separate talks with both Jonathan and Buhari.
"The U.S. government strongly believes in Nigeria having credible, free and fair elections next month," said Kerry.
Jonathan, for his part, emphasized his commitment to holding free, fair and credible elections.
"I made it absolutely clear that the May 29 handover date is sacrosanct," he said in a statement released by State House after the meeting with Kerry.
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Idowu said the election commission had done everything necessary to guarantee a trouble-free poll.
"We are doing everything that we need to do; everything is in shape ahead of the election," he told AA.
"As we speak now, the inter-consultative meeting on electoral security is planning for the security of the election," the spokesman said.
Idowu also noted that voter card collection had increased appreciably, dismissing concerns of mass disenfranchisement.
"We have in fact exceeded the 44 million mark out of 68.6 million [voter cards] and distribution is ongoing," he told AA.
"In Nigeria, you should usually expect a spike [in voter card collection] as the polls approach," Idowu said.
The electoral commission, meanwhile, has extended the deadline for collecting voter cards from Jan. 31 to Feb. 8.
It has urged registered voters to pick up their cards before the expiration of the new deadline.
The commission insists that anyone without a voter card, which are designed with biometric security measures to curb vote-rigging, would be barred from casting a ballot.
"The commission reaffirms its determination to make the 2015 elections free, fair, credible and peaceful," said Idowu. "The commission urges all stakeholders, including voters, to spare no effort in working towards the same objective."
The spokesman dismissed recent claims that Commission Chairman Attahiru Jega, a professor of political science, had resigned from the post.
"There are a lot of scurrilous activities that occur at times like this, but I definitely don't know where such claims are coming from," Idowu said. "The information is absolutely not true."
