if u are for free and fair elections where our choices will be held sacrosant and the people's wish done join the League of Southeast South south Student Activists as we mobilise for accountable politicking where politicians will be accountable to the people. Let's not sit and fold hands while our country drifts. Let's help secure our future, http://www.facebook.com/pages/lesssa/115676981812732

The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe has won the $300,000 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, which recognizes artists who have had an extraordinary impact in their field. The award, named after the silent film stars, will be delivered at a ceremony on Oct. 27 in New York. Past winners include Robert Redford, Ornette Coleman, Merce Cunningham and Frank Gehry. Mr. Achebe’s books are among the most widely read in African literature. His 1958 novel, “Things Fall Apart,” has sold more than 10 million copies, and he has also won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction and the Nigerian National Merit Award.

The League of Southeast Southsouth Student Activists is planning to launch an unprecedented grassroots awareness and mobilization tool for Nigerian youths and students as we warm up to ensuring that our dear country makes a break from its dark electoral history. Keep informed, http://www.facebook.com/pages/lesssa/115676981812732

Ribadu is welcome to the race

Nigeria's chief election commissioner formally asked on Wednesday for a three-month delay to January's presidential elections, saying more time was needed to iron out problems with voter registration.

"What is worth doing is worth doing well," Independent National Election Commission (INEC) Chairman Attahiru Jega said at a meeting with political parties to discuss possible delays to the January vote.

"If we are willing to give an extension up to March, our preference is that we should get an extension up to April because when we get this sufficient time, we will have enough room to do an excellent job," he said.

Africa's most populous nation is due to hold presidential, parliamentary and state governorship elections in January, but INEC has warned it is in a race against time to amend a deeply flawed electoral roll.

It said on Sunday the May 29 date for the inauguration of the winner of the presidential election would remain "sacrosanct" even if the voting timetable were amended.

President Goodluck Jonathan is the favourite to get the nomination for the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP), which has won all three presidential races since the end of military rule in 1999.

But the struggle to secure the PDP ticket is more contentious than in previous years. The party has failed to reach a consensus over Jonathan, a southerner who inherited the top job when president Umaru Yar'Adua, a northerner, died earlier this year during his first term in office.

Some PDP officials say the nomination should go to a northerner this time because of an unwritten agreement that power should rotate between north and south every two terms. Continued,

i agree sir. the environment has to be right

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Bothered about the possibility of registering 70 million Nigerians for the 2011 polls, the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP), yesterday asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to extend the voters registration exercise to March or April next year.

The group also appealed to President Goodluck Jonathan and the National Assembly to join in calling on the electoral body to adjust the timetable. But the electoral body, in reaction, said it would stick with the timetable and urged political parties to mobilize Nigerians to ensure its success. According to the timetable released recently by INEC, the voters registration will hold between November 1 and 14 this year.

The CNPP Spokesman, Osita Okechukwu, who described the timetable as “a race against time”, said in a statement in Abuja that if the time allotted for the exercise is not changed, the forthcoming polls could suffer legitimacy crisis.

“We call on Attahiru Jega to come to terms with the unrealistic nature of his timeline, the race against time, undue haste the timetable represents and formally request President Goodluck Jonathanand the National Assembly for extension of time to March – April 2011, otherwise time will be too short for 70million people to register and the 2011 elections will suffer legitimacy crisis,” the statement said.

The opposition group argued that it is inconceivable for INEC to procure the Direct Data Capture {DDC} machine, train officials and conclude registration of 70million people within 14 days. It recalled that Mr Jega once expressed concern about time for the activities lined up ahead of the polls, insisting that the issue should treated seriously.

It also said that its investigations on the matter revealed that as of today no deal has been sealed, as none of the companies issued Request for Quotation (RFQ) to procure the DDC machines and their components has been offered award letter.

“In a semi-literate computer society, when and how will the INEC ad -hoc officials be trained to efficiently man the DDC machines in 120,000 centers nationwide in so short a time?,” the CNPP asked. “Are the companies capable to manufacture the fast hybrid minutiae and pattern algorithm which is the main ingredient of speed search of fingerprint database at over 1.5million fingerprints per second on a standard Quad Core?”

On the time of the amendment of the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act 2006, which INEC predicated the timetable, the CNPP said there is nothing sacrosanct in the exercise carried out by the National Assembly, stressing that “free, fair and transparent 2011 poll is more important than the amendment without Uwais Report.”

Play your part

Kayode Idowu, a media aide to the INEC chairman, said in a telephone interview that the exercise would go on as planned and asked the political parties to play their role

“Considering that INECjavascript:void(0); plans to deploy DDCs at the 120,000 polling stations each with a median population of 500 voters, it is sensibly projected that 70 million people can be registered over a period of 14 days at nine hours of the exercise each day, If there are up to that number of registrable voters out there,” Mr Idowu said.

“That is the basis of the projection and INEC is fully resolved to play its part if the others play theirs like political parties mobilizing their supporters to turn out within the stipulated time.”

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