No fewer than 15 out of the 18 registered political parties would be nominating candidates to contest the September 19 Edo Governorship election, BusinessDay has learnt.
The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu who disclosed this Friday at the virtual meeting of the Inter-agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES), also said the political parties had invited the Commission to monitor their primaries.
Yakubu said that already there were warning signals that the conduct of primaries by political parties would as usual be very acrimonious, lamenting that the acrimony is carried forward into the electioneering campaigns and election day activities.
He called on security agencies to act proactively, emphasizing that an early engagement with political parties and aspirants is necessary in order to create the atmosphere for peaceful primaries and consequently peaceful elections.
The INEC Chairman also said there was need to review the security architecture in the light of the COVID -19 pandemic and come up with clear guidelines as well as supplementary code of conduct for security personnel on election duty.
“As the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic will impact on the planning and deployment strategy for the conduct of elections generally, it is necessary for ICCES to evolve effective ways of securing and protecting the integrity of the electoral process.
“Fortunately, in the aftermath of recent Governorship elections, ICCES set up an ad hoc committee to advise it on security arrangements for future elections. The report of the Committee, which will be presented for consideration at this meeting, is coming at an auspicious time.
“We should, as a matter of urgency, come up with a policy and code of conduct for security personnel in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic”, the Professor of history stated.
