No fewer that one million ad-hoc staff would be engaged for the 2019 general elections, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has disclosed.
Yakubu, who appeared before the Senate Committee on INEC on Wednesday, revealed the the commission plans to make five categories of disfranchised Nigerians participate in the 2019 general elections.
The five categories of disfranchised Nigerians are the 16,000 INEC staff, members of civil society organisations who serve as election monitors and observers, the media, security personnel and prison inmates.
According to him, the one million targeted ad-hoc staff for the elections, which remain 484 days from, would be about 300 higher than the over 700 ad-hoc staff engaged for the 2015 general elections.
Yakubu said: “The projected increase in the number of adhoc staff to be engaged in the elections by the commission arose from the need to make provisions for adequate manpower for the exercise on a general template and specifically to take care of peculiar needs for that purpose in some polling units across the federation.”
The chairman of the Commission allayed the fears of Nigerians on the smart card readers, boasting that the electronic device will function properly during the general election.
The INEC boss said: “Controversies and challenges raised on the Smart Card Readers in the 2015 elections to us in INEC were over magnified because the problem was not technological on the part of the device, but attitudinal on the part of the users due to lack of adequate training.
“Thus, because the problem is more of attitude than technological defects, solid steps are being taken by the commission to bring about robust interface between the machine and those to use them in terms of practical trainings before the elections.”
Speaking on the coming governorship elections in Anambra, Ekiti and Osun States, Yakubu said the next year the commission will show Nigerians how prepared it is for the 2019 general elections.
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