6,050 candidates slug it out in today's election

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), says 6,050 candidates will be contesting the governorship and State House of Assembly elections across the country on today Saturday April 11.

This is contained in the commission’s daily bulletin issued in Abuja on Friday.

According to the bulletin, of this number, 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 prepared to address the challenge of late arrival of materials and personnel at some polling units across the country.

It added that measures were also 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.

The telephone lines are: 09050858629, 09050858675, 09050859649, 08180958715, 08180958717, 08180958709, 09025038466, 07086945927, 08120183063, 07062896047, 08105119010, 08146697603, 07098115257, 07098117563, 07098110916 and 07098116381.

It added that INEC Citizens Contact Centre could also be reached on different social media platforms such as Facebook: www.facebook.com/inecnigeria; Twitter: www.twitter.com/inecnigeria, email: iccc@inec.gov.ng, website: www.inecnigeria.org, and Instagram: @inecnigeria.

It said a robust technical support teams of the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT), Department would also be deployed to trouble shoot and fix smart card readers where they fail to work.