In Edo, INEC, Ad-hoc Staff Exude Confidence On PVCs Collection, Credible Polls

In Edo State, there were anger and disenchantment on the rescheduling of the general elections, but officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and even some ad-hoc staff who are mostly members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) have re-assured the people of the state that the Commission was ready to conduct a credible, free and fair election.

  Miss Abimbola Gbadamosi, an INEC ad-hoc staff and a youth member corps told The Guardian that they have been adequately trained by the Commission for the exercise, stressing that with innovations like the card reader, issues of impersonation and other lapses would be reduced drastically.

  She said: “I feel great, I feel happy that I am getting the opportunity to participate in our democratic process. I see it as an opportunity to render services to my country Nigeria.”

 
   On the training she said: “The training has been going on well and for my group, it has been well conducted and I believe everything is going to be okay.

   But the State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr. Mike Igini has raised fear that some desperate politicians have been trying to infiltrate the NYSC to get personnel and sometimes material to help them rig elections in Nigeria.

 Speaking in a meeting he had with political parties and the media on the level of the preparedness of INEC for the rescheduled elections and the expected efficiency of the Card Readers, Igini said the Commission stopped using civil servants and primary school teachers for elections, because they were being compromised by the politicians.

 “INEC started making use of civil servants at the state level, primary school teachers as obtained in other parts of the world, but because of the level of collusion, INEC decided to go into the partnership with NYSC as well as federal agencies, but what do we find today, politicians are now doing everything to infiltrate even the NYSC. There are fake NYSC members being introduced by politicians whereas in other parts of the world, elections are conducted using teachers and other category of workers.

 
“Political parties and their leaders should go and look for good candidates, go and look for popular candidates. If you are in office you have to work because salvation cometh only from the electorate, and not from INEC officials, don’t bother yourself.   

  “With these Card Readers, no room for thumb printing, no room for snatching of ballot papers. These card readers are the audit train required by the collation officers. These card readers will tell you what happened at the polling units. It does not appear to me that politicians know what is ahead of them, if they know the debate about postponement, they will not bother about them because there are so many things to be done.

  “Everything that goes not at the polling unit goes to our central server. There will be no rigging as people are plotting or thinking.”
   He said all polling units and polling points would have a card reader 
   “INEC’s total staff strength is about 13,000 but for this election, we are going to engage well over 900,000 persons out of the 13,000 staff strength, those who will be engaged in election activities are very few.

  “In this state, we need a total of 15,571 staff to conduct election. We have commenced and concluded the training of our ad-hoc staffs and others. We have also concluded arrangements that election day, it is electoral officials that will be waiting for voters and not voters waiting for officials that we are working to change and it must change,”
 Igini said.

    He said INEC has gone digital, but that politicians in the country were still operating in the analogue way hence reports of people stealing permanent voters cards with the intention of using them to vote during the elections. Igini said postponing the election was a painful one to all.

 “Nigerians are justified with their expressed displeasure of this slight change in the timetable, but we are assuring that ultimately this development would also bring about electoral outcome that would keep our democracy ever young for the good of our country. 

  “We should always bear in mind that the political environment in which we operate is a dynamic one; that is why we plan for the rational and adapt our plans to the emergent within the constitutional time frame. Emergent issues are things that are either outside your planning control, or emerge outside projected expectations or emerge from the field where expectations must conform to realities.”

   On whether Nigerians can still trust the Commission because of the shift, the former students union activist said: “I can assure you that the autonomy of INEC is unblemished. If you recall correctly, after the Council of state meeting and even though all the attendees who spoke after the meeting to the media characterised the meeting in the subjective light of their political interests, they were all unanimous about the fact that only INEC as an independent body could take a final decision on whether election could be shifted. As former and current leaders they are all acutely aware that only INEC by virtue of its status as an independent election management body can schedule elections, so that issue is undisputed.”