A total of 3, 008 card readers will be used for Saturday’s governorship and state House of Assembly elections, the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Kaduna State, Abdullahi Kaugama, has said.

Mr Kaugama said this while addressing journalists at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) headquarters in Ungwar Rimi Friday afternoon.

He said that the commission would cancel votes where card readers were not used, warning voters against the rejection of the device at polling units.

“Where there is no card reader, there will be no voting,” he said appealing to the electorate to cooperate with INEC officials.

He said further, “We have given refresher training to all our card reader’ operators in the state.”

“As earlier discussed in our meeting, we are now ready for the conduct of the Saturday polls,” he added.

The REC said all sensitive and non-sensitive materials have been dispatched to the 23 local government areas of the state.

Mr Kaugama said 38 governorship candidates would contest the polls adding that the commission was not aware of any contestant that had stepped down for popular candidates in the state.

He said 396 candidates will vie for the 34 state assembly seats in the state.

“All materials, sensitive and non-sensitive have all been dispatched to the 23 Local Government Areas of the state.

“As early as 7:30 a.m., all the ad hoc workers will be at the various polling units in the 23 LGs.

“34,000 adhoc staff that will conduct tomorrow (Saturday) elections. 10,000 are from the National Youths Service Corp members.

“38 candidates are contesting the Governorship Election. There are 34 state constituencies in the state and 398 candidates will contest.”

“It is too late for candidates to step down for each other because the ballot papers have since been printed with names of all the candidates on it.”

The REC said the commission has investigated incidences of substitution of trained ad-hoc staff with untrained ones by some supervisors. He promised that the perpetrators would be brought to book.

“We have carried out certain internal reorganisation to ensure that the culprits were sanctioned and to prevent a reoccurrence.”

Also speaking, the state Commissioner of Police, Ahmad Abdurrahman, said the force had reviewed the lapses it recorded in the Presidential and National Assembly polls and put measures in place to correct them.

Mr Abdulrahman said that all vigilante or Civilian Joint Task Force operatives have no official role during the elections.