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| LEFT: INEC Chairman, RIGHT: Election Box |
Festus Okoye, chairman,
information and voter education committee of INEC, made this known at a one-day
seminar on media and gender sensitive reporting of elections in Abuja.
According to Okoye, 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.
He said over 70 percent
requirement in some states of the federation were drawn from students of
federal tertiary institutions. “For the 2019 elections, INEC will recruit and
deploy over one million adhoc staff made up of lecturers and students in
federal tertiary institutions and corps members,” he said.
“These category of adhoc 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.
He said the resolution of the
problems that led to the strike would be in the national interest and Nigeria’s
democracy. Adekunle Ogunmola, chairman, outreach and partnership committee of
INEC, said the seminar was organised to brainstorm on new ways to use media to
promote gender equality in the electoral process. Ogunmola said the commission
understood the indisputable role of the media in setting and resetting the
mindset of the electorate to make the 2019 elections more gender sensitive.
He said beyond the freedom to
vote and adherence to electoral laws, a free and fair election was also about a
participatory process where voters were well informed to make right choices.
Ogunmola added that the media serve this role through objective and impartial
reporting of political events which help to shape public opinion and deepen
democracy.
He urged the media to plan
contents that would support gender in their reportage of the electoral process
to ensure inclusiveness.
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