The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), says a total of 6,050 candidates are standing for the April 11 governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections across the country.
INEC, in its daily bulletin issued in Abuja on Friday, said 760 candidates are vying for governorship positions while 5,290 are contesting for positions in the state Houses of Assembly.
It noted that governorship election would take place in 29 states, leaving out seven states, namely: Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti, and Kogi where the governors’ terms had not expired.
The commission said it was able to address the challenge of late arrival of materials and personnel at some polling units across the country.
It added that measures were also put in place to address the seeming lack of proficiency in the use of the Smart Card Reader (SCR) by some ad-hoc staff.
“The commission has concretized its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Nigerian Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), to transport personnel and materials to polling units.
“It has also retrained its ad-hoc staff who would administer the smart card reader.
“Also, the staff and the general public have been charged to step up their interaction by taking advantage of the hotlines of the INEC Citizens Contact Centre’’, it said.
It said a robust technical support teams of the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT), Department were also deployed to troubleshoot and fix smart card readers where they fail to work.
(NAN)
