Festus Okoye, National Commissioner for INEC and Chairman of the committee in charge of information and voter education, provided the clarification in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Abuja.
Okoye was responding to the concerns and controversies that had been brought up regarding INEC's proposal to use the Lagos Park Management Committee, led by MC Oluomo, for the transportation of election people and supplies during the state's upcoming elections.
According to him, the road transport union's responsibility is to help the commission execute an agreement between the commission and the drivers who will be hired for election work. Insisting that INEC was committed to the individual drivers, he pleaded with Nigerians to quit associating the organization with any particular person.
“This commission has contract with individual drivers. The National Union of Road Transport Workers has no vehicles. So, we signed individual contract with all the persons who are going to provide vehicles for us.
For this election we are going to hire at least 138,000 vehicles. We are going to hire over 4,000 boats and we are going to hire over 8,000 motorcycles.
“We are going to sign individual contract with all these people. The only thing the road transport union workers does for us is that we have what we call a Memorandum of Understanding with them, so that if for instance any of the members goes AWOL, they will help us track the person down.
“If somebody does not report on a, they will help us find out why the person has not reported on time. But our contract is with individual drivers,” he said.
“The Resident Electoral Commissioner for Lagos State has never said that we are going to work with individual you have mentioned.
“What he said was that if there’s no NURTW in Lagos, but Park Management Committee, that we are going to work with the committee, because we cannot be seen to be breaking the law.
“So, that is the issue. People should banish this whole idea of linking the commission to an individual.
“Our commitment is to the individual drivers that are going to sign a contract with and we are also going to take oath of neutrality and oath of allegiance to the commission, and that is where we stand on the matter,” he said.
Individual interest and political groups have shown concerns on the use of the Park Management Committee by INEC for the elections.
