The Independent National Electoral Commission Monday announced that it plans to hire the services of 1.4 million ad-hoc staff for the 2023 general elections.
Festus Okoye, National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, INEC, who disclosed in a television interview added that those to be engaged are members of the National Youth Service Corps and final year students of tertiary institutions.
He said “it is next to impossible for INEC to have over 1.4 million staff members on its pay roll. The strength staff of the Commission is around 16,000 and so when we devolve the collection to the various registration areas, we are going to engage the services of corps members to assist the Commission in terms of giving out these PVCs.”
Okoye said those who are harvesting VINs would only oppress voters and prevent them from exercising their rights on election day.
He noted that the data of every registered voter was domiciled in the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System and not in the PVCs.
He said, “Those who are harvesting VINs of registered voters are doing that in futility. Why are they harvesting and buying off VINs when those VINs were published in our local government areas and in our registration areas when we displayed the voters registers for claims and objections. Those VINs are there.
“We have made it very clear that this Commission will deploy BVAS for voters’ identification and authentication and the data of every registered voter in Nigeria per polling unit is domiciled in BVAS and not in the PVCs.
“The only thing the Presiding Officer will do on election day is to look at the last six digits of your PVC and use it to bring out your VIN for the purpose of calling up your data from the BVAS.
“Those buying PVCs and harvesting VINs can only engage in voter oppression. They can only prevent the voter from going to the polling unit on election day but in terms of carrying the PVC of someone else to give another person for voting, I can assure you that it is next to impossible”, Okoye added.
