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ABUJA— Seventeen political parties participating in the forthcoming Governorship election in Edo state have nominated only 44,687 of the 80,410 agents required for the elections.
Data released by the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC on Thursday and signed by Sam Olumekun, it’s National Commissioner in charge of Information and Voter Education Committee, indicated that Edo State has 4,519 polling units and 211 collation centres, comprising 192 ward centres, 18 Local Government centres and the State collation centre in Benin city.
Consequently, a political party fielding candidate in the election is expected to nominate 4,730 agents.
“From the 17 parties participating in the election, the Commission expected a cumulative figure of 80,410 agents. However, only 44,687 were uploaded to the portal made up of 43,043 polling, 1,452 ward, 179 Local Government and 13 State collation agents. Put together, the 17 political parties nominated 55.6% of the expected number of agents.
“Three political parties uploaded the details of their agents for all levels of polling and collation while one party has no single agent for any level of voting or collation”, said Olumekun.
A review of the data showed that the All Progressives Congress APC, Peoples Democratic Party PDP, Labour Party, New Nigeria Peoples Party NNPP and the Zenith Labour Party ZLP substantially met the nomination requirements.
INEC had since 2020, replaced the manual process for accreditation of observers, media, polling and collation agents with dedicated portals to which the required information, including photographs, are uploaded.
Political parties were subsequently required to upload the details of their agents for polling units and collation centres for all elections.
