The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has held a retreat during which it inducted 10 new resident electoral commissioners (RECs).
The electoral umpire also seized the opportunity to assure the citizenry of “improved organisational capacity for better service delivery”.
Part of the official news release made available to ExpressDay quoted the Chairman of INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu as saying, “retreat such as the one we are gathered here for has become a well-established global practice.
“For us in INEC, retreat is not just about induction of new appointees. Beyond that, it is an opportunity to review performance, reappraise processes, discuss innovations, engage service providers, interface with lawmakers on critical areas of reform and explore new frontiers in our continuous effort to improve organisational capacity for better service delivery.
“Many of you here may recall that this is the 5th retreat organised by the Commission in the last two years. 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 to the review of the 2023 General Election. Today, we are holding another retreat to induct 10 new RECs: nine of them were sworn-in on 12th December 2023 and one of them on 30th January 2024.
“In a matter of weeks after the swearing-in, many of the of the new RECs were saddled with the task of conducting re-run elections in a few locations in some constituencies or bye-elections in entire constituencies.
“As I said repeatedly on many occasions, the reality of the work we do in INEC is that there is no election season in Nigeria at all. 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 137 days.
“In addition, there are five pending bye-elections for Babura/Garki Federal Constituency of Jigawa State and four State constituencies: Khana II of Rivers State, Bagwai/Shanono of Kano State, Zaria Kewaye of Kaduna State and Ganye of Adamawa State.
“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.”