600, 000 ad hoc staff needed to decentralise voter registration — INEC

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has said the commission will require over 600,000 ad hoc staff to decentralise the Continuous Voters’ Registration (CVR) exercise to all polling units in the country.

Prof. Yakubu, who made this known while flagging off the exercise in Abuja yesterday, said over 4,000 INEC staff were at the moment handling the exercise in the 774 designated centres nationwide.

“If we are to devolve this exercise to the ward level on the basis of five staff per ward, we will need over 44,000 ad hoc staff for the exercise.

“If we devolve it to 120,000 polling units on the basis of five staff per polling unit, we would end up engaging over 600,000 ad hoc staff for the exercise and since it is not going to be for a week or two, we need to consider the logistics,” he explained.

He assured Nigerians that the current exercise was only the beginning as the commission was considering devolving the exercise to 8,809 wards and 120,000 polling units.

“We are working on the logistics because this exercise is going to be really huge,” he said.

Prof. Yakubu also said it was illegal for foreigners to register during the exercise “just as it is illegal for them to vote during our election and the Nigeria Immigration Service has already apprehended many foreigners in possession of the PVC and appropriate actions are being taken against them.”