The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Thursday, said it does not have any contract with the Lagos State Parks Management Committee led by Musiliu Akinsanya popularly known as MC Oluomo to convey election materials for the Commission in the state during the general elections.
Against the backdrop of a claim that the popular transport union leader, who was once former Chairman of the Lagos branch of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and a strong ally of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has been engaged for the electoral duty, some stakeholders in the election, including the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had railed against the move.
But INEC, while clarifying the situation, INEC said its contract would be with individual transporters in the various forms of transportation business across the country, including land and waters and not transport unions, adding that the only relationship with the unions was to commit them to maintain order during the elections.
Festus Okoye, while making the clarifications on The 2023 Verdict, a special programme Channels Television designed for the 2023 polls, on Thursday, said the commission would be engaging owners of vehicles and motorcycles for the road transportation and boats for water.
His words: “For the 2023 election, this Commission is going to hire at least 138,000 vehicles and we have hired vehicles in the past. This Commission is going to hire at least 4,000 boats; we have hired boats in the past, and this Commission will hire at least 88,000 motorcycles. Now the Commission enters into individual contracts with the vehicle owners; we don’t enter into any form of contract with the union. What we have with the National Union of Road Transport Workers and with the National Association of Road Transport Owners and the Marine Union is what we call a Memorandum of Understanding.
“We don’t enter into a contract with them. So, the issue of the name of an individual being mentioned to the effect that the individual is going to provide all the vehicle that the commission needs or for the purposes of this election is just mischievous.”
Explaining that that INEC’s MoU with the transport unions was for accountability in case a driver absconded or did not turn up for duty, he stressed that the Commission usually dealt with each state according to their peculiarity, adding that the Supervising National Commissioner in Lagos State had assured of a hitch-free arrangement.
Okoye, National Commissioner on Information and Voter Education, also spoke on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) during the mock accreditation exercise recently conducted in 436 polling units, saying the performance was not only quite satisfactory, but that Nigerians who participated in the exercise expressed satisfaction with it and commended the Commission for the advancement, as well as the device effortlessly captured the fingerprints of registered voters or their facials.
Okoye, on the same day, explained why commission would not extend the collection of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs), saying the need to move the staff to other sectors that yearned for attention ahead of the elections, necessitated that aspect of the electoral process to be closed.
“Unfortunately we are not going to extend the collection of PVCs. The periods we have extended are sufficient and we need to get right into the election and do some other things. If we don’t move our staff away from the issuance of PVCs, other sectors that we need to take care of will definitely not be taken care of,” Okoye said, adding that the commission did not have the figures of the number of cards collected yet.
“We have informed all our electoral officers in all the local government of the federation and all the resident electoral commissioners to compile all the details of PVC collection based on each polling unit, based on each registration area, based on each local government, and also based on state specifics and forward immediately to INEC at the national headquarters to enable us to publish so that Nigerians will know the number of PVCs collected,” he said, adding that the commission would gather uncollected PVCs and deposit them at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) until after the 2023 elections.
