Seventeen political parties participating in the forthcoming Governorship election in Edo state have nominated only 44,687 of the 80,410 agents required for the elections.
Data released by the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC on Thursday and signed by Sam Olumekun, its National Commissioner in charge of Information and Voter Education Committee, indicated 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.
Consequently, a political party fielding candidate in the election is expected to nominate 4,730 agents.
A review of the data showed that the All Progressives Congress, APC, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Labour Party, New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP and the Zenith Labour Party, ZLP, substantially met the nomination requirements.
INEC 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.
Political parties were subsequently required to upload the details of their agents for polling units and collation centres for all elections.
For the Edo State Governorship Election, the portal opened on 17th of July 2024 and automatically shut down at midnight on 30th of July 2024 as indicated on item 9 on the Timetable and Schedule of Activities for the election released almost a year ago in September 2023.
