Photo caption: Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has urged newly inducted Resident Electoral Commissioners to commit themselves to quality service delivery by upholding the ideals of credible elections in Nigeria.
Mahmood gave this charge at the induction ceremony of 10 new Resident Electoral Commissioners in Lagos on Monday.
He said the commission will continue to engage with the National Assembly on areas of electoral administration that require reforms.
The INEC chair said that in preparing the RECs for the task ahead, there’s no election season in Nigeria.
“Elections are held all year round in addition to numerous electoral activities such as voter registration. Even today’s retreat is holding against the background of forthcoming governorship elections in Edo State in the next 81 days and Ondo State in the next 137 days.
“In addition, there are five pending bye-elections. These outstanding bye-elections bring the total of such elections to 14 since the inauguration of the national and state assemblies in June last year,” he said.
“Looking forward, there are four major elections before the next general election in 2027. The Anambra State governorship election next year will be followed in 2026 by the Ekiti and Osun State Governorship elections.”
Prof. Mahmood said that two out of the 10 new RECs who will be overseeing the off-cycle election in Edo and Ondo states have been properly inducted and are not entirely new to election administration.
He charged the RECs to continue to work on improving the process.
“As new RECs, we should focus on how we can acquaint ourselves more with the processes and procedures of the Commission. For the veterans, we should leverage our privileged field experience to contribute to how to mitigate recurring challenges in the areas of pre-election and post-election litigations, operational issues especially in the area of logistics, improvement on voter education processes, issues of strategic communication and combating fake news, misinformation and disinformation as well as inclusivity in the electoral process,” he said.
