Edo: 17 parties nominate only 44,687 agents out of 80,410 required, INEC data shows

By Folorunso Alagbede, Abuja

Out of the 80, 410 agents required for the next month’s governorship election in Edo State, only 44, 687 have been nominated by the seventeen political parties participating in the election.

This was revealed in the statistics/data released by the Prof Mahmood Yakubu -led-Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on Thursday in Abuja.

The data signed by Mr Sam Olumekun, the National Commissioner in charge of Information and Voter Education Committee of INEC, showed that 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.

Each of the political parties fielding candidate in the election is expected to nominate 4,730 agents.

According to the data, “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.

“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”, the data released by Olumekun said.

A comprehensive analysis of the data revealed that the ruling All Progressives Congress APC, the Peoples Democratic Party PDP, Labour Party, New Nigeria Peoples Party NNPP and the Zenith Labour Party ZLP substantially met the nomination requirements.

It will be recalled that the electoral body had since 2020, replaced the manual process for accreditation of observers, media, polling and collation agents with dedicated portals to which the required information, including photographs, are uploaded.