AHEAD of the 2023 general elections, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, on Friday, said the electoral umpire will put a premium on corps members’ security and welfare while they are on election duties.
Yakubu gave the assurance during a meeting with the acting Director General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Mrs. Christy Uba, in Abuja.
According to him, the meeting is to officially smoothen out all arrangements for the participation of corps members as ad-hoc staff in the forthcoming general elections as NYSC members form the multitude of ad-hoc staff for the electoral umpire.
In his opening remarks, the INEC Chairman observed that it is practically impossible to conduct elections in Nigeria without the support of the corps members.
He said, “The truth is that INEC can’t conduct elections successfully without the support of the NYSC. The NYSC members are our most reliable, readily available, educated, patriotic and the largest number of election duty staff in the country.
“We’ll continue to place premium on the security of corps members on election day, and for this reason we will also extend insurance cover in case of injury and other emergencies for all corps members involved in election duty.
“Working with the security agencies, we’ll also extend protection and security to the NYSC members lodges when they are deployed to the field on election day because we have had some unhappy experiences before when some hoodlums raided the corpers lodges in some places while the NYSC members were on election duty.
“We’ll continue to take whatever steps that are necessary to protect and guarantee the security and welfare of the NYSC members.”
According to him, the introduction of more technology in the country’s electoral system had increasingly made the participation of corps members more valuable during elections as it requires a pool of educated and ICT-savvy individuals to operate efficiently.
The acting NYSC DG, on her part, assured the INEC boss that corps members would go out in teams to cross all T’s and dot all I’s during the elections.
Uba stressed the need for the security of corps members who are participating, as the NYSC is liaising with the Department of Security Services (DSS) to identify crisis-prone areas.
The NYSC boss, however, appealed to INEC to improve the remuneration for the ad-hoc staff.
(Vanguard)
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