The Federal Government on Wednesday N459 million for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to procure 17,000 smart card readers to authenticate voter’s card in future elections, starting from 2015.
The Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, who announced this to State House correspondents after the weekly Cabinet meeting, presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan.
He said the contract which is the first batch will be delivered in six months. The remaining two batches will be awarded at a later date.
Maku explained further that the card readers are meant to stop incident of double voting and to detect fake voter’s cards
“In its desire to ensure free, fair and credible elections, the INEC is to procure, customize and configure 17,000 smart card readers that will be deployed during elections for voters authentication.
“The SCR will be used to verify the rightful owner of the voter’s card presented for identification during elections.
“In order to show the commitment of this our administration to free, fair, and credible elections in the country, Council approved the procurement of 17,000 smart card readers in favour of Zinox Technologies Ltd at the rate of N27,000 in the sum of N459 million with a completion period of six months”, Information Minister said.
Also, the Minister of Youth Development, Alhaji Abdulkadir Inuwa, presented his ministry’s performance report for 2012.
According to him, about 700 Nigerian youths have been trained in agro-allied business o make them self-reliant
“Over 100,000 youth corp members (under the National Youth Service Corps- NYSC) were trained in agricultural enterprises. In a number of cases beneficiaries were given grants and kits. Similarly, 250,000 corpers were deployed last year. 247,000 of these participated in different programmes. Another 200,000 benefitted from the entrepreneurial program while 100,000 participated in the agricultural scheme,” the minist
