The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has urged the leadership of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), the National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) and the General, Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) to ensure that their members who would be deployed in the movement of sensitive items and men of the commission during and after the 2023 general elections are insulated from partisan politics.
Yakubu gave the advice on Tuesday in Abuja at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between INEC and the leadership of the three relevant unions.
The MoU was designed to facilitate the successful deployment of personnel and materials for the 2023 general elections to INEC state offices in 774 Local Government Areas, 8,809 electoral wards and 176,846 polling units across the length and breadth of our country.
He maintained that men of the unions to be deployed must swear to an oath of neutrality. He equally pleaded with the unions not to fail the commission in the discharge of their onerous and sensitive assignment.
He said:” A new requirement in the new electoral legal framework is that everyone involved in election duties must subscribe to the INEC oath and affirmation of neutrality. We will therefore require your members to swear and strictly adhere to this oath and the INEC code of conduct for electoral officials as your participation in the delivery of electoral logistics requires absolute neutrality and non-partisanship.
“The security agencies shall not only be available to escort all vehicles and boats to locations, but they will also ensure the safety and protection of all election personnel and materials. As usual, we shall track the movement of all vehicles and boats electronically and in real-time to ensure that election personnel and materials are not hijacked or diverted.
“Learning from the experience of the past, I would like to appeal to all the unions and service providers to abide by the spirit and letter of the MoU and the contract agreements respectively.
“They must see their role as a national call to duty by ensuring that there is no failure on their part, especially on the eve of elections when it is too late for the commission to make an alternative arrangement.
The unions should keep an eye on your members to ensure that when they take personnel and materials to designated locations, they also bring them back at the end of the elections. Your contract is for both forward and reverses logistics.”
ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
and then