4 months after polls, INEC owes NYSC ad hoc staff N3.6m

Four months after the conduct of elections into the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) area councils, there are strong indications that the FCT Electoral Commission still owes over 300 ad hoc staff N3.6 million. The ad hoc staff, who comprise majorly of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members, are said to have kept on visiting the office of the FCT Resident Electoral Commission, demanding the payment of their N12,000 stipend, which has remained unpaid.

A highly reliable source at the FCT REC office that prefers not to be named confirmed that most of the Corps members were still trouping into the office, demanding the payment of the budgeted fees for the conduct of the area council polls on April 9, 2016.

According to source, this could however be because some of those contracted did not give correct bank details as well as omission of account number.

However, as at the time of filing this report, about 60 individuals with complete documentation have not collected their payments. This portends to lead to breach of trust, confidence and violation of Memorandum of Understanding signed between INEC and NYSC.

Connected Development (CODE), a civil society group that monitored the 2015 general elections and FCT polls, however, confirmed the development through its chief executive, Hamzat Lawal, when contacted that even though it could not confirm how many had been paid yet, there was no cogent reason why they have not yet been paid.

“Specifically, we went to the office of the director of finance to know why these funds have not been paid, but I can tell you authoritatively that there is no concrete reason these funds had not been paid, because it is actually in their accounts,” Lawal said.

While commending INEC for the conduct of the elections, Lawal, however urged the electoral umpire to go back to the drawing board ahead of the 2019 general elections, “as we speak to you now, some of the ad hoc staff that were engaged in the electoral process have not been paid, and these are young NYSC ad hoc staff members, and it is quite sad, because these funds were budgeted for and were released before the elections, we wonder why some government officials are sitting on this fund, so we call on INEC to release these funds and pay their NYSC ad hoc staff.”