INEC promises timeliness during election, signs MoU with transport unions

By Punarimam Fehintola

Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has signed a memorandum of understanding with NURTW, RTEAN and NARTO to ensure timeliness during the 2019 general elections and to also ensure worthiness of these vehicles to avoid  logistics problem as it is always a major challenge.

The INEC chairman prof. Mahmood Yakubu said INEC is set to arrive polling units untime with electoral materials and wait for voters instead of allowing voters to wait for Officials “ One of the critical challenges to the conduct of elections in Nigeria is logistics.In Nigeria, only INEC undertakes such a huge nationwide deployment and retrieval of personnel and materials twice within a short period of two weeks. This is the task that must be accomplished in the next 65 days for Presidential and National Assembly. We want to reassure Nigerians that we are determined that all polling units nationwide will open at 8.00hrs”.

The INEC chairman made this disclosure during the signing of MOU between INEC, RTEAN, NURTW, AND NARTO on efficient logistics delivery for 2019 general elections and beyond.

Prof Mahmood further explained that INEC requires over 100,000 vehicles therefore there is the need to go  beyond the internal resources of INEC to provide “It is for this reason that the Commission has been in partnership with the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) for which an MOU was first signed with the Union in January 2015. However, with the increase in the number of voters as well as political parties since the last General Election, we need to increase the pool of our service providers to meet the consequential increase in the number of vehicles”.

The INEC Chairman also said INEC will fully supervise these vehicles to ensure their worthiness and will also monitor their conversations through the use of monitors to avoid partiality .”The security agencies shall escort all vehicles to locations. In addition, we shall track the movement of all vehicles electronically and real time as we did in some recent elections”.

Professor Mahmood Yakubu assures Nigerians that INEC is ready to ensure mistakes of the past does not  repeat itself in any way.

“Learning from the experience of the past, I would like to appeal to Unions to ensure that there is no failure on their part, especially when it is too late for the Commission to make alternative arrangement or to hike fares and put us in a difficult situation on the eve of elections.