Pre-election litigation poses challenge to Bayelsa, Kogi, Imo polls — INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission has said that pre-election litigation is posing a challenge to the governorship polls in Bayelsa, Kogi, and Imo states.

The INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, stated this at the quarterly meeting with political parties on Tuesday.

Yakubu expressed concern about the series of recent judgements and orders of the court in respect of the nomination, substitution, or disqualification of candidates after all the sensitive materials have been printed.

He said, “The reprinting of the materials in compliance with court orders within a short period of time is not only expensive, but the management of the process is very challenging.

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“Although the commission has already published the final list of candidates for the three states, four recent court orders have compelled us to review the list. These changes have been reflected in the updated list of parties and candidates on our website.

“However, this decision is without prejudice to any pending appeal by the affected candidates or their political parties.”

The INEC Chairman also stated that not all the political parties have nominated agents for all the polling units and even the collation centres in the three States.

Yakubu said, “Political parties have uploaded the names of their polling and collation agents to the dedicated web portal.

“As I informed Nigerians at the meeting with our Resident Electoral Commissions last week, a total of 137,934 agents made up of 130,093 polling and 7,841 collation agents have already been uploaded to the portal.

“However, not all the political parties have nominated agents for all the polling units and even the collation centres in the three States.

“In the next few days, the Commission will publish the detailed distribution of agents uploaded by all political parties for public information.

“I urge you to consider the submission of names of agents as important as the nomination of candidates for election.”