The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared that it was ready to conduct bye-elections for the Ogoja/Yala federal constituency and the Akpabuyo state constituency in Cross River state on Saturday, February 26, 2022.
Speaking in Calabar Friday during the movement of sensitive materials from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in Calabar to the three local government areas (LGAs) involved, INEC’s national commissioner, Mr. Festus Okoye, said political parties and civil society organisations (CSOs) had, on Thursday, February 24, inspected the electoral materials deposited with the CBN and confirmed their authenticity.
Okoye said the materials would be moved to where the bye-elections would take place, adding that three resident commissioners from Oyo, Edo and Enugu states would supervise each of the three LGAs.
He said, “Each of the resident commissioners will supervise one of the LGA and they are signing the result sheet for their specific LGA, this is because we want to guarantee the integrity of the result sheets.
“We are going to make sure that we monitor the movement of our result sheets from the polling units up to the registration areas and the LGA levels. We have no fears as we have done due diligence in the process and have trained the necessary manpower needed for the election.
“The security agencies are here to escort the materials to the various venues for the by-elections and political parties, CSOs are free to follow these materials to the last destination.”
The national commissioner stressed that “only people whose names are on the voter register during the 2019 general elections would vote in the bye-elections since INEC is yet to print permanent voter cards (PVCs) for new registrants.”
He said the use of incident forms had been banned by the Commission as it “now uses the Bi-modal Voter Accreditation System (BIVA) that is customised to each polling unit in the bye-elections.”
