The commission's chairman, Prof. Mahood Yakubu, has stated that any staff member found to have compromised the previous exercise will be barred from working on upcoming Governorship and Assembly elections. He ordered disciplinary action against those staff members as soon as possible.
The commission had received reports of infractions from state offices, complaints, and petitions from political parties and candidates. Yakubu emphasized that any action taken by the commission is without prejudice to the rights of parties and candidates to seek further remedy as provided by law.
Yakubu also addressed logistic problems experienced in some states during the election. He stated that the centralization of the process in some places resulted in a delayed deployment of personnel and materials and the late commencement of polls.
He also emphasized that RECs will be held responsible for tardy arrangements or failure to deploy electric power generators to collation centres or polling units where such facilities are needed.
Refresher training will be conducted for ad hoc staff who participated in the last election, and they will be replaced for good reasons. Yakubu stressed the need for proper training to prevent delays or compromised processes at any stage.
The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) will be deployed once again for voter accreditation and result management. The deployment of BVAS has gone a long way to sanitize voter accreditation.
Since last week, the commission has intensified the review of the technology to ensure that glitches experienced, particularly with the upload of results, are rectified. The commission is confident that going forward, the system will run optimally.
Yakubu called on all staff to work harder to overcome the challenges experienced in the last election, adding that nothing else will be acceptable to Nigerians. All staff found to be negligent, whether they are regular or ad hoc officials, including collation and returning officers, must not be involved in forthcoming elections.
RECs must also immediately initiate disciplinary action where prima facie evidence of wrongdoing has been established.