Elections: Nigeria’s future depends on you, INEC chief tells staff

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the first batch of two-day training took place in Lagos for officers from the 19 northern states on Monday and Tuesday.

Kuna said:This is our country, we all need to collectively join hands to see this election run smoothly.

“Everyone, whether ad hoc or permanent staff, we are all Nigerians and we are all doing this for our country and for the consolidation of democracy.

“The future of this country depends on what we do as election administrators as permanent staff and ad hoc staff.

“They have to take responsibility, it is an obligation and a national duty for us to do the right thing and ensure that the elections are credible.”

According to him, the materials for the upcoming elections are sent daily to various states before the vote, hence the need for EMSC to monitor the deployment to see the gaps and correct them.

“As we speak now, the materials are going to the states. We want how to start accurately monitoring, on a day-to-day basis, what each state has received to see if there are any gaps.

“Conducting an election requires thousands of materials to be sent to the states and thousands of activities to be planned.

“We have to systematically verify these activities and this meeting is meant to start verifying these activities and materials.

“That is the final check to see if there are any gaps and we will fix them, and if there are problems we fix the challenges before the election.

Kuna assured the electorate that the INEC president had consistently promised Nigerians that the 2023 general election would be one of the best ever held in Nigeria.

According to him, Nigeria can see this in the gubernatorial elections held in Ekiti and Osun and other elections held by INEC.

“Our elections continue to improve. There is no cause for alarm.” he said.

According to him, there are exactly 29 days left until the opening of the polls on February 25 for the presidential and National Assembly elections and 43 days until the elections for the governorship and the state houses of Assembly on March 11.

It said 93,469,008 voters would cast their ballots in 176,846 voting units clustered in 8,809 districts across the country.

Kuna said that the preparations had reached an advanced stage, and the INEC was in the last phases of the implementation of this election.

He said election materials and personnel had to be procured, controlled, secured, delivered, trained and deployed in the right numbers, in the right places, at the right times.

According to him, since its inception, EMSC has provided the commission with a broad framework to improve coordination, efficiency and effectiveness in the planning and implementation of electoral activities.

Kuna said that the EMSC was designed to provide electoral administrators with a tool to visualize electoral activities as they were or should be implemented.

“EMSC is a planning, monitoring, implementation, early warning, and support system that enables the commission to proactively plan, monitor, and implement election activities.” added.

Kuna added that it also helped provide a level of visibility into field operations by helping to identify electoral risks or threats well in advance of the planning and implementation of an election.

He added that the EMSC helped provide support to field officers and activities in areas when and where such support might be needed.

He said that he focused on the training of Administrative Secretaries, GAP Heads, as well as the three EMSC Desk Officers to constitute a nucleus of EMSC trainers for each of the 36 states and the FCT.

Kuna said the assembled staff under the leadership of the administrative secretary were expected to implement a training program for Election Officials (OEs) and other staff at the state level.

“This training gives us, both at the headquarters and state level, an opportunity and the necessary tools to have a clear assessment of readiness states, as well as to have full control over all planned activities.” he said.

He urged officers to meticulously monitor the implementation of the 2023 general election in the remaining days to identify gaps, assess risks, and provide overall leadership and guidance to the full range of ad-hoc personnel in the field.

According to him, identified gaps must be filled and emerging risks addressed so that voters can go out on Election Day to vote for their preferred candidates.

He commended Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) of the European Union Support for Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) for its continued support of INEC programs and in particular EMSC.

In his welcome speech, Mr. Olusegun Agbajethe Resident Election Commissioner in Lagos State recalled that the 16-member EMSC committee was reconstituted in 2018 with a mandate to constantly monitor all levels of election preparation.

Agbaje, who was represented by the INEC Administrative Secretary, Mr. Adebisi Ajayi saying: ” The conduct of free, fair, credible and inclusive elections implies adequate planning and the strengthening of monitoring mechanisms of all electoral activities to achieve the desired success”.