ALL is set for the kick-off of the Kogi Governorship election billed to take place on Saturday 16th November as Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, distributes election materials to various collation centres today as at 1 pm in Lokoja.

Speaking to The ICIR, Ahmed Zachary, an Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, official at INEC’s Crowther Memorial office in Lokoja, confirmed the arrival of sensitive materials, adding logistics were also in place for the elections on Saturday.

“We are really prepared for the elections tomorrow as you can see we just received election materials and our ad-hoc staff are already on ground so there’s no cause for alarm,” he said.

The ICIR enquired why the list for ad – hoc staff assigned to electoral duties who are National Youth Service Corp, NYSC, members were filled with mostly ex – corp members.

Ahmed explained that during the electoral orientation for currently serving corp members they had mistakenly assigned forms meant for serving corp members to ex – corp members and it was not rectified before the list was published.

“During the orientation for serving corp members, we gave out forms to them that was meant for ex – corp members which is why we directed the serving corp members to ignore that error and just check for their names,” he said.

Idayat Hassan, Executive Director of Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD, speaking to The ICIR said beyond election monitoring her organisation seeks to maintain the integrity of the ballot at an optimal level to maintain healthy governance level.

” We want an atmosphere where the integrity of the ballot is at an optimal level beyond election monitoring we want to combat misinformation and disinformation so that people will be able to vote in the right person through the right process,” she said.