***Insists on digital process
By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu has urged political parties to comply with the digital procedure of uploading agents of their political parties saying there is no going on manual accreditation.
Yakubu stated this in his opening remarks when the Commission hosted National Chairmen and leaders of political parties in Nigeria to an extraordinary meeting ahead of next month’s governorship election in Edo state even as he said the need for the meeting cannot be overemphasized.
Yakubu told the chieftains of political parties that the meeting was called in fulfilment of his promise to invite them to brainstorm on the best way to ensure that the Edo election is free, fair and credible if all the stakeholders do their part of the job.
He however, told the gathering that after harvesting the details of Polling and Collation Agents uploaded to the Commission’s portal for the Edo State election, INEC discovered that there are compliance issues with regard to the quality of uploads, particularly as they relate to the images of Polling Unit, Ward and Local Government agents.
Said he: “This problem cuts across all political parties despite the fact that this is not being done for the first time. And in keeping with our practice before major elections, we trained officials nominated by political parties. We also set up a Help Desk in the event of any political party needing assistance.
” I want to emphasise that there will be no going back to the manual process. It is gone for good. Already, observer groups and media organisations are in full compliance with the digital procedure. Political parties cannot be an exception. You must do the needful instead of constantly complaining of shortfalls in the number of accreditation tags supplied for your agents”.
Speaking further, Yakubu said: ”We will only produce tags for uploads that meet the requirements of our regulations and guidelines. The Commission is determined that your agents at Polling Units and Collation Centres must be identified by name and their photographs clearly printed on their accreditation tags duly authorised by the Commission. We have also added a QR Code to each tag for easy authentication and verification of your agents at the polling and collation centres. Matters arising from the recent uploads will be discussed at this meeting.
” Let me now turn to a matter that requires your urgent attention, i.e. the nomination of polling and collation agents for the Edo State governorship election. Some of you here may recall that in consultation with the political parties, we replaced the manual process for the submission of the list of agents with a digital platform.
” We have done the same for accreditation of observers and media organisations in consultation with the stakeholders. On our own, we have also replaced the manual process of recruiting ad hoc staff with a digital platform called the INECPRES. All these activities are now done electronically on a number of dedicated portals. This has simplified our processes and reduced costs for all stakeholders”, he added.
