Edo guber: INEC reads riot act to political parties

•Insists on electronic accreditation agents

By Jude Opara, Abuja

With barely three weeks to the Edo state governorship election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has warned that it will stick with the electronic accreditation of party agents and observers.

INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu gave the admonition on Thursday at an extraordinary meeting with leaders of political parties on the forthcoming September 21 governorship election in Edo state.

Yakubu said the era of doing manual accreditation of observers was over, even as he urged the political parties to concentrate on uploading the data of their agents and other representatives instead of writing to complain of difficulties in getting it done.

He further explained that all other stakeholders involved with the said election including observers and media have all done their accreditation electronically, in line with the resolution of the Commission to do away with manual accreditation.

“I want to emphasize that there will be no going back to the manual process. It is gone for good. Already, observer groups and media organizations 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. 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 authorized by the Commission”.

Yakubu also said that the  electoral body has executed most of the timelines for the election except for only three activities whose dates are still ahead.

“We are now left with three outstanding activities, namely the publication of Notice of Poll scheduled for Saturday 7th September 2024, the Last Day of Campaign by political parties which is Thursday 19th September 2024 and, finally, the Election Day which is Saturday 21st September 2024.

“In addition to these statutory activities, we have intensified our engagement with stakeholders at State and Local Government levels. Similarly, voter education is ongoing. We have concluded the training of security personnel and we are finalizing the delivery of the few remaining non-sensitive materials for the election.

“We are concluding arrangements with the land and maritime transport unions for logistics. The printing of triplicate copies of voters’ register for each of the 4,519 Polling Units in Edo State is virtually completed. The installation and configuration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines to be deployed on Election Day is completed”.

Similarly, the INEC Chairman added that to ensure a  conduct of the exercise, the signing of the peace accord ny the political parties would take place in Benin city on 12th September.

”After consultation with the National Peace Committee (NPC) under the leadership of our respected former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar GCFR, the signing of the Peace Accord for the Edo State Governorship election will take place on Thursday 12th September 2024 in Benin City.

“You may notice that unlike the previous peace accords signed a few days to the election, it was decided to do so early this time around to enable the Peace Committee to monitor compliance with the code voluntarily signed by parties, candidates and other critical players in the electoral process such as INEC and the security agencies during the remaining days to the election”.

Yakubu added that the signing of the Peace Accord will be preceded by the INEC Stakeholders meeting to be held on Wednesday 11th September 2024 in Benin City.