BENUE: Presidential, NASS elections hold in three LGs

Presidential and National Assembly elections are held today in five units in three local government areas of Benue State.

Mr. Nentawe Goshwe, Benue State Resident Electoral Commissioner, in a statement on Sunday, identified two polling units in Otukpo LGA, one polling unit in Apa LGA and two polling units in Ogbadibo LGA all within the five polling units. He also noted that the smart card readers malfunctioned in the affected areas based on the lack of skills and little time that the ad-hoc staff had.

Read also: Opposition parties allege plot to tamper with results from Nigeria’s capital territory

“I would not be surprised (that some ad hoc staff did not know how to use the card readers well) because we had training of 22,000 ad-hoc staff in few days. So few days to train those number of staff to acquire the skill and knowledge this period is huge and we are expecting to use the corpers as major people to do it because we have been doing training with corpers for some time, we expected them to play a lead role in handling our card readers. Unfortunately, most local government and communities the corpers do not go there because of the crisis we have in the state, because of fear of attacks, some corpers do not go to some localities.

“We got five places that we could not hold elections yesterday because as at 2pm, card readers had not functioned. So we shifted elections by 24 hours according to the guidelines provided by the Electoral Guidelines. The places elections are holding are two units in Otukpo, one in apa and two in Ogbadibo” he said.

Goshwe who also attributed the delay of the announcement and collation of result to the bulk of work required to collate results of about 72 candidates, said:

“We have 72 contestants to this position compared to the last election. We had less than half of that as contestants for that election. So you require more than twice the time to make entries. So the delay should be possible.”

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now