INEC to Prioritise Training of Adhoc Staff

•Commences review of 2023 general elections July 4

Alex Enumah in Abuja

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disclosed that priority will be given to the training of its adhoc staff as efforts to improve upon future elections in the country.

INEC’s Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Mr. Festus Okoye, made the disclosure yesterday, while speaking on Arise News Prime Time programme.

Okoye, who spoke against the backdrop of the report of the European Union Election Observer Mission, also assured that the electoral umpire would take a critical look at the report with the view of implementing recommendations within its powers.

Okoye, who observed that one of the complaints of the EU in the report released on Tuesday, bordered on the lack of adequate training of the adhoc staff who served during the last general elections, noted that over 1.5 million adhoc staff were deployed to over 176,000 polling units because of additional polling units created for the polls.

He said, “we are going to look into that and see how we can decentralise the training of the adhoc workers”, in addition to introducing online training, “so that we don’t need to cluster everybody around the classroom in order to train them”.

Besides, Okoye disclosed that from July 4, INEC would commence its internal as well as external review of the 2023 general elections, with a view of assessing its performance as well as looking at areas for improve performance.

He explained that the delay was to enable court cases over the conduct of the polls reach an appreciable state.

“Starting from July 4, we are going begin our internal and external review of the conduct of the election, we are going to begin with the interaction and interphase with our Resident Electoral Commissioners….we have to wait a little bit to make sure that the judicial process is firmed up so that nobody will accuse the Commission of interfering on the judicial process, it has gone almost the whole hub.

“Moreover, we have three governorship elections in November, so we need to know the things we did right, the things we did do right, where we failed completely and then we begin to look for mechanism on how to consolidate on the progresses and successes recorded”, he added.