Political parties in Kogi State have been warned not to undermine or take the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for granted.
The Kogi State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Prof James Apam, gave the warning in Lokoja on Thursday, when political parties failed to attend the various stakeholders’ meeting INEC has put in place towards making the forthcoming general elections free, fair and credible.
Apam stated that the stakeholders’ meetings are for INEC to interact with politicians, security agencies, civil society organisations, the media and other critical stakeholders.
He lamented that in all the meetings held, politicians and political parties, who are critical stakeholders, have refused to attend.
The REC added that the meeting is aimed at intimating the stakeholders on how leadership would be sought and politics played, just as he asked the political parties to make themselves available towards realising credible elections.
According to him, “Our efforts in the issuance of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) has not yielded the desired results as we still have about 209, 257 uncollected Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) in the State as at yesterday.
“As I already mentioned, elections to the office of the President and the National Assembly will be conducted on the 16th February while elections into the State House of Assembly will be conducted on the 2nd March.
“Voting will be done in 3,508 polling units/voting points in 239 registration areas in the State in the forthcoming election.
“We require a total of 15,479 ad-hoc personnel to man the polling units while other categories of staff ranging from supervisory presiding officers, Collation and Returning officers will be trained from the 28th to 31st January this month.
“In Kogi State, we have 73 candidates for the Senate seats, 153 candidates for the House of Representatives and 478 for the State House of Assembly,†Apam added.
Source:
dailypost.ng/2019/01/24/2019-elections-dont-take-inec-granted-kogi-rec-warns-political-parties/
