Stormy election for NYSC members

The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members, who worked for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as ad-hoc staff, went through difficult experiences in various parts of the country these past two weeks, with some bordering on grave danger. Daily Trust Saturday took a look.   The one-week shift in the date of this year’s […]

The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members, who worked for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as ad-hoc staff, went through difficult experiences in various parts of the country these past two weeks, with some bordering on grave danger. Daily Trust Saturday took a look.

 

The one-week shift in the date of this year’s general elections, from February 16 to 23, led to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) ad-hoc staff, mostly National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members, to be stranded in many states under conditions that have been described as ‘inhuman’. Some had been trained, shortlisted and presented to serve as Presiding Officers (POs) and Assistant Presiding Officers (APOs) for the presidential and National Assembly elections, deployed to their areas of service until early morning and few hours to the official commencement of the elections, when the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu announced a one-week shift.

Despite the outrage over the postponement, the poor treatment of NYSC members deployed as INEC staff did not escape attention. Between Friday night and Saturday morning, social media was abuzz with pictures and videos of corps members sleeping in poor conditions because there were no arrangements for their accommodation and welfare. Some of them vented their anger and decried the neglect and irregularities that dogged their welfare, accusing the Federal Government and INEC of treating them ‘as slaves’.

A corps member identified on Twitter as @tfk_gawat wrote: “I’ve not slept all night because I don’t have space, limited classes were opened for us. People had to sleep on the grass here with cover cloths. I left home since 8am only to sit at the local government till 5pm.”

Some corps members said they had reported at the local government offices of INEC by 5pm on Friday and were deployed to various Registration Area Centres (RACs) where they took stock of the sensitive materials available for the polls. They got wind of a possible postponement by 11pm the same night, but were directed to await final confirmation at 3am on Saturday.

Miss Ruth Yohanna, a corps member in Maiduguri, Borno State, narrated how terrible the experience was. “Our lives were at stake. There was no guarantee,” she said. “We had to go the previous night because we held sensitive materials. Our venue was a primary school in Federal Low Cost, Bolori One. Some of us slept on chairs, under canopies or trees. There were very few mats to sleep on that Friday night. Towards morning hours when the election was postponed, our supervisor did not address us to tell us to go home. We got the news and left on our own. It was later on that we got to know about a new election date.”

To make matters worse, Miss Yohanna did not get the honorarium given to ad-hoc staff by the Borno State government. “Some got N20,000, others N15,000. Like me, many others didn’t get anything. Aside this, we still haven’t gotten the allowance due us from INEC up till now,” she said.

A corps member in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Miss Fumi Simon said she slept on the floor throughout the period. However, unlike Miss Yohanna, she got N3,000 twice for the two Saturdays and presently awaits payment by INEC.

Some said that though adequate security arrangements were made for them at the RACs, they were left to sort out their welfare individually. Also, no INEC official gave them any welfare package or spoke about it all through the period they awaited confirmation of the election shift. Food was not made available, no beds were brought in, and no restrooms and toiletries were provided, before heading to their respective polling units from the RACs had the election held on February 16. Most of them, including nursing mothers and those pregnant, slept in broken-down vehicles, under trees, in classrooms, and open fields.

Daily Trust Saturday also gathered that corps members in Lagos State slept on bare floors. “We didn’t even find a place to bath or eat,” a Lagos State corps member said. “Mosquitoes feasted on us. Regular secondary school students can’t sleep in their own classrooms, but we were let down by the nation. We are graduates, for God’s sake. We know what we came out for when we answered the clarion call, but we were treated as slaves in return for our patriotism. It was a bad experience for most of us.” She went further to allege the substitution and replacement of names of some corps members with those of non-corps members by officials at the Commission’s local government offices which resulted in irregularities in the allowances they were paid last Sunday.

A corps member who also spoke anonymously, lamented a similar treatment meted on them by INEC, but added that were it not for the timely intervention of the FCT NYSC state coordinator, Mr. Bello Balama, they would have deliberately disobeyed regulations by staging a protest. “Some of us slept in halls while others slept under the trees at GSS Nyanya where I was deployed to. There was a planned protest against the treatment meted on us before we got an SMS message from the state coordinator that we shouldn’t be provoked to anger. He assured us that everything would be taken care of. Shortly after the SMS came, we started receiving bank alerts of N2,800 as feeding allowance. Right now, we are back to our places of primary assignments awaiting next steps with regards to the elections,” he said.

Reports from other states across the country also painted a gloomy picture. In its initial response, INEC insisted it made provisions of buckets, generating sets and mattresses at the RACs nationwide, as part of measures put in place for corps members’ welfare before their deployment to various polling units by 5am that Saturday. The Commission said corps members who faced welfare challenges did so because the RACs in the states were unsure if the elections would take place as earlier scheduled.

The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mr. Rotimi Oyekanmi, said the RACs were expecting go-ahead signals from headquarters before releasing the welfare materials. On the photographs of corps members in unsavoury conditions circulating on social media, INEC said the images were taken at the premises of its local government offices where adequate security arrangements were not implemented, and not at the RACs as claimed by the NYSC members.

NYSC members decried discrepancies in election allowances paid to them after the polls shift. However, speaking at a media briefing on the Wednesday before Saturday’s elections, INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu said that the corps members were prepared for and taken care of. He added that there is no disparity in the payment of N30,500 allowances to be paid as entitlements to corps members participating as ad-hoc staff in this year’s elections.

Yakubu, who spoke at the National Election Collation Centre located at the International Conference Centre (ICC), Abuja, said each corps member was entitled to N4,500 training allowance, including transport (N1,000) and refreshment (N500), for the three-day training period. “For deployment on election duty, they are entitled to transport, feeding and an honorarium of N9, 000 and N4, 000, making it N13, 000 each. For the presidential election, N17, 500 is expected to be paid separately to each member. Since no training will be conducted for the second election,” he said, adding that each corps member will receive N13, 000, making a total of N30, 500. “That is the Standard allowance for corps members.”

Efforts by Daily Trust Saturday to get an official response from INEC on Youth Corps’ welfare, was unsuccessful.