Edo gov’ship: INEC not supporting parties, candidates, says INEC chairman

The Chairman Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, on Friday charged the commission’s staff to remain neutral and exhibit professionalism in the conduct of the September 19, governorship election in Edo state.

Prof. Yakubu gave the charge in Benin during a meeting with Electoral officers (EO) and Head of Units (HoU) across the 18 local governments of the state.

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He said neutrality and professionalism is very important to deliver free, fair and credible election.

“We are not supporting any political party or candidate and we are not against any political party or candidates either.

“Our concern is the integrity and transparency of the process. The choice of who becomes the governor of Edo state is entirely in the hands of Edo people and we are going to protect the process,” he said.

Prof. Yakubu said the commission has introduced new innovations in order to deepen transparency in the result management process of election

He noted that the new innovations would enable Nigerians to see polling units results on line.

“In addition to the card reader authentication, we are going to deploy a tablet with a camera, which after voting has been concluded and ballots sorted out and counted, the picture of the ECFA (result sheet) would be taken and transmitted to a dedicated portal so that Nigerians can view the polling unit results live and direct by those closed to the polling units,”

He said the commission did same in Nasarawa state Central by-election and that before the declaration of results Nigerians were able to view some clean results of some the polling units.

He said the commission is looking forward to availability of ECFA for public views on election day.

” Four years ago we were here and the lesson we learnt then is to be able to speed up the process and declared the result on time because the longer it takes, the more it became problematic to manage, so we must get logistics right,”.

He assured that the election would be conducted in strict compliance with COVID-19 protocol, adding that it is working in collaboration with Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 so as to get inferred thermometer.

Earlier, the state Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Johnson Alalibo Sinikiem, said the card readers for the election have been supplied and are being configured for the election.

He said the meeting with electoral officers and heads of unit would ensure credible governorship election in the state.