Post Election - INEC Met With EOs To Review 2023 General Election

Post Election - INEC Met With EOs To Review 2023 General Election

Today the 19th of July 2023, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) met with Electoral Officers from 36 States, the FCT and Transport Unions, at the first in the series of 2023 Post Election Review Meetings, scheduled to hold over the next two weeks.

The Commission traditionally holds such review meetings after every general election, to holistically look at what worked, what didn’t and identify Critical areas for improvement. For the 2023 General Election, the Commission deployed men and materials to 176,606 polling units nationwide.

INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, in his address, said the success of any election primarily depends on the ability to deploy personnel and materials to various locations.

See INEC Chairman Full Address below:

It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this meeting. Some of you here today may recall that at the meeting with the RECs held two weeks ago on Tuesday 4th July 2023, the Commission announced the commencement of the review of the 2023 General Election.

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This was followed a week later by State level review meetings nationwide involving our regular staff and ad hoc officials.

Today, we commence a more focused engagement at national level with the Commission’s frontline officials, the Electoral Officers (EOs).

We also considered it appropriate to interface with transport providers to review logistic arrangements by inviting the leadership of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, the National Association of Road Transport Owners and the Maritime Workers’ Union of Nigeria.

There is no doubt that the success of any election depends on the ability to deploy personnel & materials to locations. In Nigeria, this involves the biggest logistic deployment the nation periodically undertakes across vast terrains & often difficult topography.

This has been a perennial challenge over time but is now compounded by issues of infrastructure and insecurity.

However, the Commission has to deploy personnel and materials not only for Election Day activities but electoral activities in general covering the period before, during and after the elections.

Many of these activities such as the Continuous Registration of Voters (CVR), monitoring of party primaries for the nomination of candidates for the election and the procurement and deployment of sensitive and non-sensitive materials must be accomplished ahead of the election otherwise critical Election Day processes will be impossible.

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This meeting therefore provides an opportunity to interact on a wide range of themes that covering of which ten critical areas are highlighted for discussion:

i) General State of Preparedness for the 2023 General Election

ii) Voters Registration Process

iii) Recruitment, training, deployment and remuneration of ad hoc staff, including specific issues of mode of recruitment, conduct of training, timing, adequacy, effectiveness and utility of e-learning training platforms, and strategy for efficient payment of ad hoc staff.

iv) Matters arising from the implementation of the expansion of voter access to Polling Units

v) Receipt and deployment of election materials

vi) Tech used during elections

vii) Election security

viii) Election Day processes with reference to:

a. Forward logistics in terms of transportation of personnel and delivery of materials to RACs and PUs, including specific issues of engagement with transport unions and the implementation of State-level obligations; and

b. Reverse logistics and movement of personnel and retrieval of field assets.

c. Inventory of election materials

d. Physical conditions of storage and other immovable facilities.

Similarly, in line with the Commission’s policy, when the review engagements are completed, a comprehensive report will be prepared.

I therefore urge you to share your experience to the discussions in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses for improvement in forthcoming elections, especially the three off-cycle Gov elections in Bayelsa, Imo & Kogi States scheduled to hold on 11th Nov 2023.

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I want to assure Nigerians in the next two weeks, the Commission plans to hold more engagements with internal and external stakeholders, including political parties, civil society organisations, the media and security agencies.

On this note, it is my pleasure to welcome you once again to this meeting. I thank you all and God bless.

Prof. Mahmood Yakubu,
Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)