The Resident Electoral Commissioner, Independent National Electoral Commission, Ambassador Oloruntoyin Akeju, has appealed to the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, to warn corps members to handle INEC assignments with all seriousness it deserves.
The REC made the appeal through the Administrative Secretary, Mr. James Popoola, when he received the Ondo State NYSC Coordinator, Mrs. Grace Akpabio, in his office.
The INEC chief hinted that the commission was willing to engage computer savvy and committed corps members because of the latest innovations they would deploy for the gubernatorial election in Ondo State come October 2020.
“It is incontrovertible fact that INEC entered into Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with NYSC Scheme to engage corps members during elections in the country and we are ready to do so and engage serious minded, computer literate and sound corps members.
“The organisation and conduct of elections have gone beyond training ad-hoc staff who are barely literate. The sophistication of equipment deployed for elections has taken serious dimensions and only serious personnel would be engaged.
“The era of just engaging every Tom, Dick and Harry has gone and anyone willing to work with us must be ready and fully prepared to go through intensive training and if found suitable, will be engaged.
“On a courtesy note, let me sound it clearly that attendance for training does not guarantee payment of training fee. Only successful candidates would be paid training fee and not everyone who sits but fails to make the final list,” he stated.
Earlier, the state coordinator, Akpabio, presented the message of the NYSC Director General, Brigadier General Shuaibu Ibrahim, to the Commission.
According to her, the Director General of the scheme had appealed to INEC not to deploy corps members on INEC ad-hoc duty to flashpoints and riverine areas during the election.
She announced that the NYSC local government inspectors had been briefed not to recommend both flashpoints and riverine areas to INEC office for whatever reason, ‘and in any event such request comes up, INEC should be more honourable to turn down the request’.
The NYSC boss requested that NYSC management at the state level should be involved in deployment of corps members for election duties so that the challenges associated with such would be better handled employing operational guidelines of the scheme.
