By Abiola Olawale
Few months before the scheduled September 21, 2024 Edo State Governorship election, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, has raised alarm about a recent flood disaster that affected its office in Benin City.
Yakubu revealed that the flood affected over 4,000 Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machines at the Commission’s office.
The INEC boss made this known while speaking at a two-day induction retreat for Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) on Monday in Lagos. This development has prompted massive reaction on social media. While some young people took to twitter to vent their anger and displeasure others resorted to using Tok Tok to mock the INEC boss for its inefficiencies. The young people are expressing disappointment that Professor Yakubu’s led INEC is allegedly engaging in inappropriate acts and inefficiencies, otherwise “ we can’t explain why a whole professor doesn’t know the issue of Emergency management strategy(EMS) that should be in place in INEC”.
However, he added that the commission had been able to recover no fewer than 3,500 of the machines.
He also revealed that the commission has already called for additional support from neighbouring States, saying the machines in the state would not be enough for the election.
Speaking about the retreat, Yakubu said the aim was not just about the induction of new appointees but an opportunity to review performance, reappraise processes, discuss innovations, and engage service providers.
He noted that it was also an opportunity to interface with lawmakers on critical areas of reform and explore new frontiers for better service delivery.
He said: “In March 2022, we had an induction retreat for new National Commissioners, followed by another one on election logistics in October, and then another retreat for new RECs in November.
“The most recent retreat was held in August last year for the review of the 2023 general elections.
“Today, we are holding another retreat to induct 10 new RECs: nine of them were sworn in on December 12, 2023, and one of them on January 30, 2024.”
The INEC boss said that in a matter of weeks after the swearing-in, many of the new RECs would be saddled with the task of conducting re-run elections in a few locations in some constituencies or bye-elections in entire constituencies.
