…To Deploy 46,084 Staff for the Elections …Registered 11,000 Observers. The Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) on Friday said it still has some security concerns about the November 11, governorship elections in Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states. According to the INEC boss, Prof. Yakubu, the three elections will involve 5,409,438 registered voters in 10,510 polling
…To Deploy 46,084 Staff for the Elections
…Registered 11,000 Observers.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) on Friday said it still has some security concerns about the November 11, governorship elections in Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states.
According to the INEC boss, Prof. Yakubu, the three elections will involve 5,409,438 registered voters in 10,510 polling units spread across 649 electoral Wards in 56 Local Government Areas. The Commission, he said would deploy 46,084 ad hoc and regular staff for the elections.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu at a meeting with its Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) at the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja said the commission is “finalising arrangements for vehicles and boats for land and maritime movement of personnel and materials.”
The INEC boss, however, expressed concern over security situation in the three states. His words: “Such massive deployment requires a secure environment which is beyond our immediate responsibilities. As we said repeatedly, we are concerned about the prevailing insecurity and election-related violence in the three states.
“We have been reassured of adequate deployment by the security agencies. On our part, we will continue to deepen our engagement with the security agencies and more meetings are planned in the next few days. Similarly, the Commission will hold a series of meetings with stakeholders at the national level in addition to ongoing engagements at state level.”
Preparations
Prof Yakubu disclosed that all non-sensitive materials for the election have been delivered to the three States.
His words: “Other preparatory activities, including training, are on course,” adding that valuable lessons for improved performance have been learnt from the 2023 General Election.
Speaking on the Commission’s mock accreditation exercise in some polling units across the three states which he described as successful,Prof. Yakubu said it was done to achieve two objectives.
His words:“Last week, we conducted a mock accreditation involving actual voters in designated polling units in the three States. We had two objectives for the exercise. First, to test the efficacy of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for especially biometric authentication of voters. Secondly, to upload the result to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV). Both tests were successful. We look forward to improved performance of the BVAS in voter accreditation and result upload in the forthcoming elections.”
Party agents
On Polling and Collation agents for the election, Prof. Yakubu said the 18 political parties participating in the elections are deploying 137,934 agents made up of 130,093 polling and 7,841 collation agents.
Observers
On the number of observers for the election, Prof. Yakubu disclosed that the Commission has so far accredited 126 national and international organisations who are collectively deploying 11,000 observers for the election.
“Although the portal for media accreditation closes on Tuesday 24th October 2023, we have received applications from 80 media organisations seeking to deploy 1,203 personnel made up of journalists and technical/support staff to report on the elections,” he added.
Security
On security, he said the Commission has been assured of adequate deployment of security agencies for the election adding that he would be meeting with the National Security Adviser(NSA) Mallam Nuhu Ribadu on Monday.
