Three national commissions deployed to Kebbi - INEC says; reveal plans to deliver credible election

Festus Okoye, the National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has revealed the plans by the commission ahead of the supplementary elections in Kebbi.

Speaking in an interview with Arise TV on Friday, April 14 from the Kebbi, Okoye noted that the commission and other allies are prepared to deliver a smooth election and skip the lapses experienced during the February 25 and March 18 elections.

He noted that the electoral body has "deployed three national commissioners to Kebbi for the purposes of this election". He further confirmed the preparedness of the security agencies in carrying out their duties.

"Based on what happened during the presidential and national assembly elections, and the governorship and state assembly elections, the commission has deployed three national commissioners to Kebbi for the purposes of this election. As you are aware, we have a governorship supplementary elections in 20 of the 21 local government areas covering several polling units."

"We also have senatorial elections in Kebbi north. We also have two federal constituency elections in Arewa Dandi and Koko/Besse federal constituency and eight state house of assembly elections."

"We have deployed staff from other states. From the Kwara, Niger and other offices who are complimenting the number of staff we have. Based on the polling units, we are going to use the staff of the commission to run this election. We have also had stakeholder engagement with all political parties participating in the elections. We also have a meeting of the inter-agency consultative committee and the security agencies have informed us that they are fully ready"

Recall that INEC declared the governorship election in Kebbi State as “inconclusive”.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the election was keenly contested by the two giant political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The collation and returning officer of the election, Yusuf Sa’idu, a professor at the Usman Danfodio University, Sokoto, announced the position at the collation centre situated at INEC headquarters in Birnin Kebbi.

He said there were cancellations of results in different polling units across Registration Areas (RAs) in 20 of the 21 local government areas of Kebbi State.

Mr Sa’idu said: “We aggregated the total number of collected PVCs in those polling units and it came to a total of 91,829.

NBA