Seventeen political parties participating in the forthcoming Governorship election in Edo state have nominated only 44,687 agents, out of the required 80,410.
This is according to data released by the Independent National Electoral Commission on Thursday, signed by Sam Olumekun, National Commissioner in charge of Information and Voter Education Committee.
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. Therefore, each political party fielding a candidate is expected to nominate 4,730 agents.
Olumekun stated, “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.”
He further noted, “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.”
A review of the data showed that the All Progressives Congress
, Peoples Democratic Party , Labour Party, New Nigeria Peoples Party
, and the Zenith Labour Party substantially met the nomination requirements.
INEC has since 2020 replaced the manual process for accreditation of observers, media, polling, and collation agents with dedicated portals, requiring political parties to upload the details of their agents for polling units and collation centres for all elections.
