The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has revealed that it will be deploying a total number of 46,084 regular and ad-hoc staff for next month’s off-cycle governorship elections in the three states of Imo, Bayelsa and Kogi states.
INEC equally disclosed that it has so far accredited 126 national and international organisations collectively deploying 11,000 domestic and foreign observers for the election.
Electoral umpire chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, made the disclosure in his remarks at a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) held on Friday in Abuja.
Yakubu said that though authorities concerned have assured of adequate deployment, however the commission is still very much concerned about the prevailing insecurity and election-related violence in the three states.
On the deployment, he told the RECs that; “while we are leaving no stone unturned in other areas of preparations for the governorship elections, the commission plans to deploy a total of 46,084 regular and ad-hoc staff for the election.
“We have so far accredited 126 national and international organisations 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.
“The 18 political parties participating in the elections are deploying 137,934 agents made up of 130,093 polling and 7,841 collation agents. We are also finalizing arrangements for vehicles and boats for land and maritime movement of personnel and materials,” he disclosed.
On the security concerns, the electoral umpire boss said: “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,” he said.
Reiterating its resolve to deploy technologies for the elections, Yakubu said: “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,” he assured.
Source: The Sun
