A political think tank group, Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts, said on Thursday that the Independent National Electoral Commission should ensure competency and integrity tests on all ad hoc staff to be deployed for the forthcoming elections.

The organization expressed concerns that politicians might try to get on the list of ad hoc staff members in order to use the workers to rig elections, but it also claimed that, based on its observation of the governorship election in Osun State, the confusion that characterized the state a few months later was due to ineffective handling of the Bimodal Voter Registration System by ad hoc staff of INEC.

It recommended that the ad hoc staff be chosen and vetted using a strict procedure to prevent another Osun disaster.

Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party was declared the winner of the governorship poll held on July 16, 2022.

Adegboyega Oyetola, his predecessor and a member of the All Progressives Congress, asserted that there were 749 polling places in 10 local government areas of the state with excessive voting.

The Election Petition Tribunal agreed with their position, and Oyetola was consequently declared the election’s victor.

However, Dr. Sam Amadi, the director of the ASSPT, claimed there was no overvoting in the election in the “typical sense” at a press conference in Abuja.

According to him, the technology requires good personnel management to ensure the success of BVAS.

He said, “The real failure in the Osun election was not BVAS. It was the personnel that managed the BVAS. As a matter of fact, there was no over-voting in Osun in the typical sense. What happened in Osun was a very costly oversight of a Presiding Officer, Supervisory Presiding Officers and INEC officers.

“There was a practical failure in the implementation of section 60 (4) and (5) of the Electoral Act. The relevant officers ought to be vigilant and ensure that the BVAS accreditation results were fully loaded before ending the process.

“Even when the losers in the election demanded the report of the BVAS, relevant INEC officials should have ensured that the full report was sent, or if there was extreme urgency, they would have accompanied it with a letter to indicate its interim nature. All these failures reinforce the critical importance of the technical and ethical competencies of persons who will supervise elections in 2023.

“We have moved to the stage where it matters about the quality and character of those who manage technology on election day. I make two important recommendations to INEC: The commission should be careful in selecting ad hoc staff. In requesting staff of sister agencies, INEC should not take any list from such agencies except the nominal list backed up by recent salary slips to verify that those persons are real staff members of the agencies.

“We fear that politicians will like to infiltrate the ad hoc staff list to use the staff to manipulate elections. INEC has to ensure that these ad hoc staff are selected and vetted through a rigorous process in order to avoid the Osun debacle on a large scale in presidential and governorship elections. Imagine the crisis we will have if Osun happens on a large scale in a highly competitive presidential election where the incentive for violence will be very high.”