‘Ad hoc personnel must be properly monitored’

A political think tank group, Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts, said on Thursday that the Independent National Electoral Commission should conduct competency and integrity tests on all ad hoc personnel deployed for the upcoming election.

While the organization feared that politicians would try to infiltrate the ad hoc personnel roster to use the workers to manipulate elections, the organization also stated that after observing the election of the governorship of Osun State, the confusion that had plagued the state for several months later characterized as a result of poor handling of the Bimodal Voter Registration System by INEC ad hoc staff.

The ad hoc personnel, it said, must be selected and vetted through a rigorous process to avoid a similar Osun debacle.

People’s Democratic Party Governor Ademola Adeleke was declared the winner of the gubernatorial poll conducted on July 16, 2022.

But his predecessor, Adegboyega Oyetola, of the All Progressives Congress, claimed that 749 polling stations in 10 local government areas of the state were overvoting.

Their argument was upheld by the Election Petition Tribunal and Oyetola was consequently declared the winner of the election.

But at a press conference in Abuja, ASSPT director Dr. Sam Amadi, that there were no overvotes in the elections in the “typical sense”.

According to him, the technology requires good personnel management to ensure the success of BVAS.

He said: “The real failure in the Osun elections was not BVAS. It was the personnel who managed the BVAS. In fact, there was no drowning in Osun in the typical sense of the word. What happened in Osun was a very costly mistake by a presiding officer, supervisory presiding officers and INEC officials.

“There was a practical shortcoming in the implementation of Article 60(4) and (5) of the Electoral Act. The relevant officers must be vigilant and ensure that the BVAS accreditation results are fully loaded before the process is terminated.

“Even when the losers in the election demanded the report from the BVAS, relevant INEC officials should have ensured that the full report was sent, or if there was extreme urgency, they would have accompanied it with a letter explaining its interim nature. to indicate. All of these failures reinforce the critical importance of the technical and ethical competencies of those who will oversee the 2023 elections.

“We have come to a point where the quality and character of those managing technology on Election Day is concerned. I make two main recommendations to INEC: The committee should be careful when selecting ad hoc personnel. When requesting staff from sister agencies, INEC may not use any list of such agencies other than the nominal list supported by recent pay slips to verify that these individuals are genuine staff members of the agencies.

“We fear that politicians will be happy to infiltrate the ad hoc staff list to use the staff to manipulate elections. INEC must ensure that these ad hoc personnel are selected and vetted through a rigorous process to prevent the large-scale Osun debacle in presidential and gubernatorial elections. Imagine the crisis we will have if Osun takes place on a large scale in a highly competitive presidential election where the incentive for violence will be very high.