We’ve ensured water-tight security for corpers working for INEC — NYSC boss

The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) of the Indepenedent National Electoral Commission, INEC in Borno state, Mr. Samuel Madaki Usman has said that all is now set for thw Presidential and National Assembly Elections slated for today (Saturday), as the commission had already received and distributed all sensitive and none- sensitive materials across the state.

Usman Madaki disclosed this at a press briefing held at the INEC office in Maiduguri, the state capital regarding level of preparedness to have free, fair and credible elections in the state.

“We received dispatchment of sensitive materials from Central Bank of Nigeria on Wednesday, and we have distributed them to all the centres across the state.

“INEC is working hand in hand with security agencies to ensure safety of personnel and voters across the state to witness free, fair and credible elections.

“We have trained all our 15,000 adhoc staff, initially, we expected 25,000 adhoc staff, but many of those who applied for the job could not make it due to lack of qualification, and we have to work with the ones we have at hand for the smooth conduct of the exercise”. He stated.

The REC also enumerated Maiduguri Metropolitan Council, MMC, JERE, MAGUMERI, BAYO, KWAYAKUSAR, SHANI, DAMBOA, CHIBOK local government areas as safer areas to conduct the elections, while the other 16 council areas that were identified volatile due to boko hat am insurgents are to conduct their elections at various camps of the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs in Maiduguri.

He sited some of the challenges faced to include the late printing and distribution of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs), and the none issuance  and collection of over 18,000 PVCs still awaited, which majority of the owners were from the volatile areas, and hope that after the presidential elections, they will avail themselves to INEC to collect their PVCs.

He however said out of the over 1.8million PVCs, they were able to distipributed over 1.4 million pvcs to eligible voters across the state, pointing out that,  with population of 70,485 that were brought to INEC, it was realized that more of the IDPs are staying with their relatives in the town and other places and urged them to come to their designated polling centres to exercise their franchise.

Already he said, Over 300 observers that were registered by INEC headquarters in Abuja were to participate in the exercise, stressing that, although, they had many that wish to be registered locally in the state but were all rejected and advised to forward their application to INEC headquarters for consideration/approval, which the applicants failed to do so up to the time of the elections.