Bayelsa, Imo, Kogi guber polls to be uploaded on IReV – INEC Chairman

INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu

The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, says that the results for Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi governorship elections will be uploaded on its Result Viewing Portal (IReV).

Yakubu stated this, while speaking with newsmen at Ward 009, LEA School, Ganaja Village, Ajaokuta LGA, Kogi.

Yakubu was in the state to monitor the mock accreditation exercise, ahead the Nov. 11 governorship election.

He said that the commission would follow the laws for accreditation and results collation during the states elections.

“The method is as provided by law, electronic accreditation, electronic upload of results on the IREV portal and that is why we are doing this mock.

“So, please disregard whatever was reported about what the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) was said to have said in Bayelsa.

“That’s going to be the procedure and it’s for that reason that I will advise you also for those who are registered on the IREV portal.

“That in the next two hours or so, go to the IREV portal and you will see the result of the mock accreditation from all the three states.

“We are uploading, as we have done in previous elections,” Yakubu said.

On the issue of security concerns ahead of the elections in the three states, Yakubu said that the commission was already working with security agencies.

“Next week Friday there is going to be a high level meeting in Abuja co-chair by myself and the National Security Adviser in which all the security chiefs will be present, no representation to discuss the issue of security.

“For the three states elections, we are on top of the situation in terms of security arrangement and security deployment,” he said.

On how INEC intend to control crowd at PU 009 in Ganaja, Yakubu said that INEC was taking proactive measures to give voters a pleasant voting experience on Election Day.

He said that INEC choose the PU 009, LEA School, Ganaja Village, because it is the largest and most densely populated in Nigeria PU with 13,000 registered voters.

He said that on the Election Day Voter register would be broken down alphabetically by the voter surnames to fast track voting process.

“After the election, the Commission will redistribute the voters to other approximate locations.

“But for now, we’ll have to conduct the elections with the number of registered voters in this polling unit.

“For that reason, we are deploying a minimum of eight BVAS machines on election day, Saturday, Nov. 11 for easy accreditation of voters,” he said.

Yakubu identified flooding as one of the challenges of the PU.

He said that INEC was already making arrangement to use Family Support Programme (FSP) Nursery, Primary and UBE JSS, Gadumo-Lokoja as alternative supper RAC in case there was flood during the election.

“If there is flooding before the election, we’ll pull the ad hoc staff out of here and move them at first light on Saturday to this polling unit.

“But our preference will be to use this place as a super-RAC where we will camp the ad hoc staff overnight,” he said.