6,050 candidates jostle for elections today – INEC

The independent National Electoral Commission has said that 6,050 candidates are contesting for positions in Saturday’s governorship and state House of Assembly elections across the country.

Out of this number, 760 candidates are in the race for positions of state governors while 5,290 candidates are contesting for positions in the state Houses of Assembly.

The governorship election is taking place in 29 out of the 36 states of the federation.

States where governorship elections are not holding are Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti and Kogi.

The commission in a bulletin added that ahead of the elections, it had taken measures to address the challenges of late arrival of materials and officials at polling units across the country.

It said the measures being taken would also prevent challenges that may arise with the use of the smart card readers by ad-hoc staff, which affected the Presidential and National Assembly elections. The bulletin added that the commission had also “retrained its ad-hoc staff who would administer the smart card readers.

The commission also urged its permanent and ad-hoc staff to take advantage of the INEC Citizens Contact Centre hotlines, which are: 09050858629, 09050858675, 09050859649, 08180958715, 08180958717, 08180958709, 09025038466, 07086945927, 08120183063, 07062896047, 08105119010, 08146697603, 07098115257, 07098117563, 07098110916, and 07098116381.

It added that robust Technical Support Teams of the Information, Communication and Technology department of the commission would be deployed to trouble shoot and fix smart card readers where they fail to work.

In a related development, the INEC Resident Electoral Officer for Kogi State, Jacob Shekwonudu, on Friday allayed the fears of the members of the National Youth Service Corps working as ad-hoc staff for today’s elections.

Shekwonudu, who addressed the corps members at the Lokoja Township Stadium, said the state Commissioner of Police had assured the deployment of security personnel to every part of the state.

Some of the corps members had initially refused to take part in the elections because of alleged inadequate security arrangements during the March 28 polls.

Our correspondent, who was at the venue, observed that most of the corps members were also reluctant to return to the various polling units, where they presided over in the last elections, after complaining about the N13, 000 allowance paid to them for the elections.

Meanwhile, in Kano, the Inter Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security in collaboration with INEC on Friday banned inter-state movement of persons before, during and after the governorship and State Assembly elections today.

At the end of its consultative meeting held at the Police Command on Friday, the committee, among others disclosed that restriction of vehicular movements would be between 6am and 6pm today, emphasising that no vehicles would be allowed to operate within the period.