INEC to deploy 46,084 staff for Kogi, Bayelsa, Imo polls

ATotal of 46,084 regular and ad hoc staff  have been lined up for electoral duties by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the November 11 off-cycle governorship elections in Kogi, Bayelsa and Imo states, the Chairman of the commission Prof. Mahmood Yakubu  said yesterday.

Yakubu told state Resident Electoral Commissioners at a meeting in Abuja that the 18 political parties participating in the election would be deploying 137,934 agents comprising 130,093 polling and 7,841 collation officers.

Eleven thousand observers from about 126 national and international organisations have been accredited for the polls, he said.

The commission, according to him, is now finalising reports of both the 2023 General Election and the outcome of its review of the same election.

He put the number of voters registered to vote in the three elections at 5,409,438.

The elections will take place in 10,510 polling units spread across 649 electoral Wards and  56 local government areas.

“So far, all non-sensitive materials for the election have been delivered to the three states. Other preparatory activities, including training, are on course. Valuable lessons have been learnt from the 2023 General Election for improved performance in the forthcoming elections,” he said.

Reviewing preparation for the polls, he said:”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.

“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.

“We are also finalizing arrangements for vehicles and boats for land and maritime movement of personnel and materials.

“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 series of meetings with stakeholders at the national level in addition to ongoing engagements at State level.”