The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced on Friday that it has deployed all non-sensitive materials in preparation for the upcoming governorship elections scheduled for November 11 in Bayelsa, Imo, and Kogi states.
Prof Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of INEC, shared this update during a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) held in Abuja.
He detailed the scope of these elections, indicating that they will involve 5,409,438 registered voters spread across 10,510 polling units situated in 649 electoral wards across 56 local government areas.
“So far, all non-sensitive materials for the election have been delivered to the three states. Other preparatory activities, including training, are on course. Valuable lessons have been learnt from the 2023 general election for improved performance in the forthcoming elections.
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“Last week, we conducted a mock accreditation involving actual voters in designated polling units in the three states. We had two objectives for the exercise; first, to test the efficacy of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for especially biometric authentication of voters, secondly, to upload the result to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV). Both tests were successful. We look forward to improved performance of the BVAS in voter accreditation and result upload in the forthcoming elections,” Yakubu said.
He said while INEC is leaving no stone unturned in other areas of preparations for the governorship elections, the commission plans to deploy a total of 46,084 regular and ad hoc staff for the three elections.
Yakubu said INEC had so far accredited 126 national and international organisations, collectively deploying 11,000 observers for the elections.