INEC Chairman, Professor Jega

By Chuks Okocha

A 10-member team from the National Electoral Commission (NEC) of Sierra Leone has arrived Nigeria for training by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) towards the November 17, 2012 elections.

A statement by the Chief Press Secretary (CPS) to the INEC Chairman, Mr. Kayode Idowu, said the team of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and operations personnel are in Nigeria for a one week training, study tour and experience sharing with INEC officials, in preparation for the elections. They are being sponsored for the study programme by the Federal Government.

The training will involve presentations by INEC’s ICT and Voter Registry personnel on such themes as ‘Using technology to solve electoral challenges,’ ‘Philosophy and Architecture of Electoral Systems,’ ‘Infrastructure Design,’ and ‘Open Source – Software and Hardware,’ among others.

By the end of the training, INEC’s personnel are expected to have helped the Sierra Leoneans to build software solutions which they could take away with them.

The Sierra Leonean team is billed to tour ICT facilities at the National Data Centre, Abuja, as well as INEC’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) office.