Chidi Samuel|
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said the lingering strike by Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will have a serious impact on preparations for the conduct of the 2019 general election.
Festus Okoye, chairman, information and voter education committee of INEC, who stated this on Thursday at a one-day seminar on media and gender-sensitive reporting of elections in Abuja, noted that over 70 percent requirement in some states of the federation were drawn from students of federal tertiary institutions.
According to him, it is next to impossible for the members of the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) to provide all the ad-hoc staff needs and requirements of the commission.
Okoye said, “For the 2019 elections, INEC will recruit and deploy over one million ad-hoc staff made up of lecturers and students in federal tertiary institutions and corps members.”
“These category of ad-hoc staff will serve as returning officers, collation officers, supervisory presiding officers, and assistant presiding officers.
“The bulk of assistant presiding officers will be drawn from students of institutions, INEC is presently organising root training for corps members and wants to begin that with students.
“So it is important and imperative that they are in school a month before the election for this to happen.”
Okoye, therefore, called on ASUU and the federal government to quickly and genuinely resolve the lingering impasse that led to uncertainty in the education sector.
The resolution of the problems that led to the strike, he said, would be in the national interest and Nigeria’s democracy.