The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has assured that the results for 11th November Bayelsa, Imo, and Kogi governorship elections would be uploaded on the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal.
Yakubu, who was in Kogi State on Saturday to monitor the mock accreditation exercise, told newsmen at Ward 009, LEA School, Ganaja village in Ajaokuta Local Government Area (LGA), that the commission would follow the laws for accreditation and results collation during the state’s elections.
He said: “The method is as provided by law, electronic accreditation, electronic upload of results on the IReV portal and that is why we are doing this mock.
“So, please disregard whatever was reported about what the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) was said to have said in Bayelsa.
“That’s going to be the procedure and it’s for that reason that I will advise you also for those who are registered on the IReV portal.
“That in the next two hours or so, go to the IREV portal and you will see the result of the mock accreditation from all three states.
“We are uploading, as we have done in previous elections”.
Regarding security concerns ahead of the elections in the three states, Yakubu said that the commission was already working with security agencies.
“Next week Friday, there is going to be a high-level meeting in Abuja co-chair by myself and the National Security Adviser in which all the security chiefs will be present, no representation to discuss the issue of security.
“For the three states elections, we are on top of the situation in terms of security arrangement and security deployment”, he said.
On how INEC intends to control the crowd at PU 009 in Ganaja, Yakubu said that INEC was taking proactive measures to give voters a pleasant voting experience on Election Day.
He said that INEC chose the Polling Unit (PU) 009, LEA School, Ganaja Village because it is the largest and most densely populated PU in Nigeria with 13,000 registered voters.
He said that on election day, the voter register would be broken down alphabetically by the voter surnames to fast-track the voting process.
“After the election, the commission will redistribute the voters to other approximate locations.
“But for now, we’ll have to conduct the elections with the number of registered voters in this polling unit.
“For that reason, we are deploying a minimum of eight BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System) machines on election day, Saturday, 11th November for easy accreditation of voters”, he said.
Yakubu, who identified flooding as one of the challenges of the PU, said that INEC was already making arrangements to use the Family Support Programme, Nursery, Primary and UBE JSS, Gadumo-Lokoja as alternative super Registration Area Centres (RAC) in case there was a flood during the election.
“If there is flooding before the election, we’ll pull the ad hoc staff out of here and move them at first light on Saturday to this polling unit.
“But our preference will be to use this place as a super-RAC where we will camp the ad hoc staff overnight”, he said.
Yakubu subsequently met with members of staff of the commission at INEC State headquarters in Lokoja.
He stated that the visit was to ask the staff questions about their preparations, what had been done, and what was still outstanding.
Yakubu noted that the purpose was to assess the readiness of the state for the election, adding that a similar visit would be undertaken to Imo and Bayelsa States.
“So far, so good on the part of the commission, we have delivered over non-sensitive materials for the election.
“Now the challenge is for you at the state level to begin to organise the materials and patch them.
“Each polling unit has a pack that is going to be carried by the presiding officer supported by the system presiding officer.
“I saw in Koton-Karfi that some of the materials have already been batched into the bags. I hope that all the local government areas will be the same all over”, Yakubu said.
Speaking earlier, the INEC REC for the state, Dr. Gabriel Longpet said that all non-sensitive materials for the election had been received and sent to the LGAs.
“We have received 60 per cent of our budget and have also started disbursing to LGAs to start those activities that need to be undertaken.
“We would like to request the Central Bank to be directed to give us our cash directly to avoid delays and problems with transportation and RAC activation”, he said.
Longpet said that details of areas of possible flash points in the state had been identified, and would be the basis of security deployment.
Source: News Agency of Nigeria
