Barely two weeks to the beginning of the 2023 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared that the February 25 presidential\National Assembly and March 11 governorship/state Assembly polls dates are sacrosanct.
The Commission’s Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, gave the assurance after inspecting the training of Supervisory Presiding Officers (SPOs) going on in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja and across the country yesterday.
Yakubu, while declaring the readiness of the commission to conduct a free, fair, credible and transparent elections, explained that for the fact that the commission is almost concluding the training of the various cadres of ad-hoc staff bear eloquent testimony that it is very much ready.
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The electoral umpire boss also used the opportunity to reassure Nigerians expressing anxieties over the efficiency of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), saying that their votes would determine who becomes whatever after the elections.
His words: “The training is further assurance and reassurance of the readiness of the commission to conduct the election on February 25 and March 11. The staff to be deployed to the field to conduct the elections are currently undergoing training not only in the FCT, but nationwide.
“Each of them will be given a training manual to review, revise the notes they took during the training. This is the affirmation of the commission’s readiness for the election.”
Giving updates on the training and implications of it, Yakubu said: “The biggest takeaway is the consistency of the purpose. Today, we have commenced the training for critical election duty staff for the 2023 general elections. This weekend, we will train the Supervisory Presiding Officers (SPOs). In the FCT, we are requiring 282 SPOs, but we are training more than that number.
“We have added 70 persons to make it a total number of 352 SPOs in case some of them are unable to make it on election day for one reason or another, we will take from the standby.
The training in the FCT is also going on in the 36 states of the federation. Between Saturday and Sunday, we will complete the training of the SPOs. Then on Tuesday, 14 to Thursday, 16 February, it will be the turn of the Presiding Officers and Assistant Presiding Officers 1,2,3.
“These are the people to operate at Polling Units levels and thereafter we will train the Collation and Returning Officers. All of them are going to swear to the oath of neutrality and oath of allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria. INEC is not a political party and has no candidate for the election.
“Our commitment is to the process and to make sure that the process is what we say it is going to be so that the choice made by Nigerians will determine who becomes whatever after the election.”
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