‘We Don’t Take Ad-Hoc Staff For Granted’, INEC Reacts To Criticism Over Corps Members

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has said
that it doesn’t take ad-hoc staff deployed for the elections for
granted.

Chairman of the Commission, Mahmoud Yakubu, said this during a
forum with stakeholders on Saturday, while responding to criticisms
over the treatment of corps members.

According to him, elections would not be conducted successfully
without the help of the ad-hoc staff.

The Commission had come under major criticism on Saturday when
images showing the corps members in distressing conditions –
cramped together, sleeping out in the open and more, along with
harrowing posts of negligence, surfaced online.

The criticism grew, spurning thousands of tweets and a global
trend on microblogging platform Twitter.

The INEC boss, however, explained that the centres do not belong
to the Commission and are only utilised once every four years.

According to him, a lot has been done to improve the conditions
of the centres.

“We have done a lot to improve the super racks. Remember these
are not facilities owned by INEC, they are public facilities used
by INEC once every four years for a general election or as the need
arises.

“But we have taken steps. We have procured generators for each
of the super racks because that is the place where the youth
corpers revise the training manuals before they are deployed to the
polling units. They also see the opportunity to recharge the smart
card readers before deployment.

“In some places, we have an understanding with the NYSC to
ensure that mattresses are made available. We have also gone out of
our way to provide mats, rubber buckets, water tanks, toiletries,
to make the condition comfortable for the ad-hoc staff that we
engage.

“Without these ad-hoc staff, INEC cannot successfully conduct
elections anywhere in Nigeria and we don’t take that for granted.
We will continue to do what we can to provide for their
comfort”.