The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is worried that the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will impact negatively on its preparations for next year’s general elections.
The chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee of INEC, Festus Okoye, disclosed this in Abuja yesterday during a one-day seminar on Media and Gender Sensitive Reporting of Elections.
It is near impossible for members of the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) to provide all the ad-hoc staff requirements of the commission, Okoye said, explaining that the electoral body draws over 70 per cent of the staff need from students of federal tertiary institutions.
“For the 2019 elections, INEC will recruit and deploy over 1 million ad-hoc staff made up of lecturers and students in federal tertiary institutions and corps members. This category of staff will serve as returning officers, collation officers, supervisory presiding officers and assistant presiding officers. So, it is important and imperative that they are in school a month before the election,” he said. Read more