Posted by Out of the seventeen political parties running for governor of Edo state in the upcoming election, only three have provided INEC with information about their agents for polling and collation at all levels; the remaining party does not have an agent at all.
INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Sam Olumekun, announced Thursday in a statement that the commission has instituted a system to electronically accredit observers, media, polling, and collation agents. The previous manual process, which involved uploading photographs and other necessary documents, has been replaced with these dedicated portals.
Afterwards, he emphasized, political parties must provide their agents’ information for all polling places and data centers.
According to Item 9 of the election schedule and timetable that was released nearly a year ago in September 2023, the National Commissioner clarified that the portal for the Edo State governorship election opened on July 17, 2024, and automatically shut down at midnight on July 30, 2024.
According to him, out of 4,519 voting units in Edo State, there are 211 collation centers. Of these, 192 are ward centers, 18 are LGU centers, and the state center is in Benin City. It is anticipated that 4,730 agents will be nominated by a political party that fields candidates in the election.
With 17 different groups running candidates, the Commission was hoping for a total of 80,410 agents. In spite of this, just 44,687 were uploaded to the web; this number includes 43,043 polling places, 1,452 wards, 179 municipal governments, and 13 state collation agents. All told, 55.6% of the total number of agents were nominated by the 17 political parties.
“An agency for each level of polling and collation was uploaded by three political parties, but no agent for any level of voting or collation was uploaded by the fourth party.”
As Olumekun pointed out, the commission’s website and social media outlets now have a synopsis of the party submissions.