Stakeholders seek upward review of remuneration for electoral officials

While disclosing this at an electoral ad-hoc staff experience sharing roundtable in Abuja, the stakeholders also recommended that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should establish a direct link with security persons posted to the various polling units.

The Roundtable was organised to commemorate the International Democracy Day by the Electoral Hub, in partnership with the Madiba Foundation for Good Governance and with the support of the MacArthur Foundation through its Organizing for a New Nigeria (ONN) project.

According to them, the electoral umpire should ensure that recruited officials possess the requisite educational qualification so as to address challenges with poor understanding of electoral process and duties by ad-hoc staff.

Speaking at the meeting, Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu, a former National Commissioner of INEC said, for electoral ad-hoc staff to perform optimally and uphold the integrity of electoral process, three qualities are required which are; knowledge, courage and carriage.

Also in his remarks, the HoD Electoral Operations, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) INEC, Ishaq Garba Aliyu, pointed out the achievements of the 2023 general elections,l. He underscored the high level of preparations that went into the process and the logistics and technological challenges encountered.

Also, HoD ICT, FCT, INEC, Antonia Idemudia, pointed out the advancements made in applying technology to various aspects of electoral conduct in Nigeria as well as the limitations of technology.

Further recommendations from the stakeholders noted that all electoral staff, including ad-hoc staff, should be required to declare any conflict of interest before deployment on election duties.

“All malpractices and breaches of the electoral process, either by permanent or ad-hoc staff, politicians, security agents, and electorates should be punished in line with the legal provisions.

“INEC should establish a direct link with security persons posted to the various polling units. Information about the full deployment of security agents including PU posted for electoral duty should be available to INEC.

“INEC should revise duties of collation officers for the different elections to better manage collation time and performance as collators of National Assembly Election Results (consisting of the Senate and House of Representatives Elections) collate twice as much results as the collation officers of the Presidential Elections do.

“Security should be treated as a collective responsibility. Security agencies, civil society actors, ad-hoc staff, voters and all other stakeholders in the electoral process should take steps towards protecting electoral materials and personnel,” the recommendations read.