The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has rejected all political parties’ nominations for polling and collation agents for the upcoming Edo State governorship election, citing widespread non-compliance with digital submission requirements.
This was announced by INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, during a meeting with political parties in Abuja on Thursday.
The INEC boss vowed that there would be “no going back to manual process” for agent nominations, noting that the digital procedure is now standard practice.
“It is gone for good,” Prof. Yakubu stated, adding that the commission is committed to modernising the electoral processes.
NewsNGR reports that the rejection stemmed from issues with the quality of uploads to INEC’s digital platform, particularly concerning images of Polling Unit, Ward, and Local Government agents.
The electoral umpire said despite prior training and the availability of a help desk, all political parties failed to meet the required standards for their submissions.
“…after harvesting the details of polling and collation agents uploaded to the portal for the Edo State election, we discovered that there are compliance issues with regard to the quality of uploads, particularly as they relate to the images of Polling Unit, Ward and Local Government agents. This problem cuts across all political parties despite the fact that this is not being done for the first time.
“I want to emphasise that there will be no going back to the manual process. It is gone for good. Already, observer groups and media organisations are in full compliance with the digital procedure. Political parties cannot be an exception. You must do the needful instead of constantly complaining of shortfalls in the number of accreditation tags supplied for your agents,” said Yakubu.
The INEC chairman stressed the importance of proper identification for party agents, stating, ” We will only produce tags for uploads that meet the requirements of our regulations and guidelines. The Commission is determined that your agents at Polling Units and Collation Centres must be identified by name and their photographs clearly printed on their accreditation tags duly authorised by the Commission. We have also added a QR Code to each tag for easy authentication and verification of your agents at the polling and collation centres. Matters arising from the recent uploads will be discussed at this meeting.”
INEC also announced plans to conduct a mock accreditation exercise to test the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal before their deployment for the Edo gubernatorial election.
The test run is scheduled for Tuesday, September 10, 2024, and will take place across 12 polling units in six Local Government Areas representing the state’s three Senatorial Districts.