The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has expressed confidence in the performance of the Smart Card Readers to be used at the forthcoming general elections, insisting that no Incident Form will be used this time.

Mr Festus Okoye, INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, expressed the confidence in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.

Okoye confirmed that the card readers had been enhanced for better performance.

He added that the commission did not expect the card readers to malfunction.

“The batteries of the enhanced card readers can last longer now. The window of the smart card reader is wider and can read fingerprints better now.

“We have upgraded the smart card readers and the ones to be used for the election are smart card readers that can perform very well.

So, we do not envisage the issue of malfunction. It will be reduced to the barest minimum.

“The issue of card readers unable to read peoples biometrics will be reduced to the barest minimum,” Okoye said.

The national commissioner said that the commission had required qualities as well as quantity to conduct the nationwide elections.

“What we did was to make up for short falls. Additional cards readers that we wanted have already arrived the country and have been distributed to all the states.

“So we don’t have challenge to the quality of smart card readers that would be used for these elections,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Lagos State on Sunday again re-trained about 846 Supervisory Presiding Officers (SPOs) to ensure flawless conduct of polls.

Mr Muyiwa Yusuf, the Lagos State Training Officer of INEC, who facilitated the training, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the retraining had become imperative to clear the air on grey areas after the first training.

Yusuf said: “We are trying to make sure all our supervisory presiding officers are on the same page because the earlier trainings were done in all the 20 local government offices of INEC in the state.

“We could see there are some contradictory statements here and there.

“So, to trash it out, we decided to call the 846 SPOs we have in Lagos State so that we will all be on the same page and pass the same message across to everybody,’’

According to him, the one-day training is in three sessions – 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; 12 noon to 1:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

He said that the commission had divided the SPOs across the 20 local government areas into three to attend each session of the training.