Sokoto INEC: We Will Use NURTW Members for Polls

Malam Muhammad Musa is the Head of Voters Education and Publicity of the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) in Sokoto State. In this Interview with NASIRU SULEIMAN in his office at the INEC, State Headquarters, Sokoto, he spoke on the readiness of the commission among other issues. Excerpts:

The elections is here, how prepared is INEC for the election in Sokoto?
Yes, we are 100% prepared, even before the postponement of the election, we have already recruited staff and trained them and we have distributed 80% of the non-sensitive materials. So, when the postponement came, it also gave us the opportunity to distribute the remaining 20%.
That is why I say now we are ready, We have also recruited over 20,000 ad-hoc staff and we have trained them, we even trained them twice; the first training was done before the postponement and after the postponement we also trained them again. So the postponement has afford us the opportunity to retrain our staff.
And in terms of logistics, we have serviced and maintained all our vehicles and distributed them to local government areas.
And we have also entered into partnership with National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) that they are going to supply us with all the vehicles we required from them during the conduct of the election, according to the peculiarity and the need of each local government The 20,000 Ad-hoc staff, what is their composition?
You know, when we were asked to recruit, we ask for application, and we specify there that; number one, you have to be a serving corps-member in Sokoto State, or a post NYSC member from 2011 to date, or a university staff or lecturer from the university or staff of Federal organisation in the state, or students of federal institution in the state. These are the categories of the staff we recruited for this exercise. But majority of them are serving corps-members, and the serving corps-members are to be used as the Presiding Officers PO, while the other recruited ad-hoc staff will serve as Assistant Presiding Officer II (APO II) or Assistant Presiding Officer III (APO III). But the main staff that are to conduct the election are corps-members. though the breakdown of the number of the corps-members recruited is not handy now, but I am assuring you that, almost all the serving corps-members cutting across all the batches in Sokoto State have been recruited for this exercise.
The issue of neutrality, how confidence is INEC on this adhoc staff, that they are going to be neutral in the conduct of the election?
If you look at the category of the staff we recruited, we assure you that they will be neutral, because a corps-member, doesn’t know anybody here, he doesn’t even know the local politics. So he be 100% neutral. And then, the staff of the university, the academicians, lecturers, doctors and professors, we can say today that they are not partisan, because, they are from the university community, they are not under the influence of any politician. So, we believe they would do what is right in the conduct of the election.
And also, we served them with oath of affirmation, we gave them a form called oath of affirmation, where they will fill it and we take it to court, where they swear that they will do the job according to the rules and regulations and the guideline of the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC.
With the recent security concern in Sokoto, particularly the rasing violent act of the political thugs in Sokoto, what are the security measures put in place for your ad-hoc staff? We have put in place adequate security arrangement, because we have what we call ICCES that is, Inter- agency Consultative Committee on Election Security, which the Commissioner of Police is heading.
And all the security agencies in the state are members of that organisation, and also working with INEC. So, we meet regularly to review and fashion out ways of how to ensure security of these corps-members and we have met before and we are also going to on Monday (tomorrow).
We have put in place a lot of security measures, which is only going to be revealed on election day. But I want to assure you that, the corps-members that are going to participate in this election, not only corps-members, but all our ad-hoc staff are going to be safe.
With people raising concerned over the neutrality of NURTW, and you said you are engaging them for the election duty. How sure are you the NURTW will not be compromised during the election?
Okay now, let me ask you one question, how do you think they will be compromised and affect the election? Their involvement is limited to supplying us drivers and vehicles and our staff would be transported from local government to ward level. That is the only job they have, they are not going to handle any election material.
Theirs is just vehicle and the driver, that will be transporting men and material where they are going to conduct election, under the Supervision of a Supervisory Officer of the R A. So, there is no way they are going to affect the election, and they are not going to part take in any distribution whatsoever, but rather, there own is just to transport men and material and wait for them, when they finish, they transport them back to the local government headquarters.
On PVC collection here in Sokoto, what is the number of the PVC distributed so far in Sokoto?
In Sokoto State, we have 1.659 million registered voters and we received the same number of PVCs and we distributed 1.572 PVCs so far. We have balances of 75-80 thousands PVCs not collected now with us, which we are hoping by the end of the exercise, the owners will come and claim them.
But one thing is certain, it is not possible to distribute 100% of the PVCs, because some people have died, some people are students and have finished their studies and relocated. So definitely we must have some remnant of the PVCs left with us.