The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has clarified that the commission didn’t sign any logistics agreements with the chairman of the Lagos State Parks Management Committee, LSPMC, Musiliu Akinsanya, popularly known as MC Oluomo.
The INEC national commissioner and chairman of voter education and information, Festus Okoye, made the clarification while reacting to an ex parte order by a Federal High Court in Lagos, restraining the commission from engaging Mr Akinsanya.
Recall that the INEC Resident Electoral Commission, in Lagos, Olusegun Agbaje, had recently said that the electoral umpire has no option other than to work with the LSPMC to distribute election materials in the state.
The comments have generated controversy in the past few days.
While allaying the fears and controversy that have greeted the REC’s comment, Mr Okoye stressed that the commission only signed a memorandum of understanding, with the National Union of Road Transport Workers, NURTW, the Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners, RTEAN, and the Marine Workers Union.
“What we have said is that any individual driver that has any vehicle and wants to work for the commission should go to any of the local government offices of the commission to go and register his or her vehicle to be used on election day,” he said.
“And when you register, you provide your name, you provide your telephone number and you provide your particulars.
“The federal road safety commission will profile your vehicle and also profile you to be sure that your vehicle is fit for purpose and also to be sure that you are a registered driver. We are going to deploy over five thousand vehicles and trucks in Lagos state.
“At the national level, since most of these people belong to unions on election day, if a transporter does not turn up, there’s a possibility that his union has his telephone number and they will call him and find out why he has not turned up.
“Each driver that we engage, we assign a contract with the commission at the local government level saying that he or she has a vehicle, that he or she is going to turn up on election day and engage with what we call forward logistics and also assisting in reverse logistics.”
He, therefore, said as far as INEC is concerned, “the judgment or injunction by the federal high court, Lagos has nothing to do with the commission because the commission did not enter into a contract with the individual they mentioned.
“The commission has no relationship with the individual mentioned and the commission never at any time said it was going to engage the individual for any purpose whatsoever.
“And I don’t think that there’s any individual that has 5,000 vehicles and can provide 5,000 vehicles for INEC.
“We don’t relate with the individual mentioned in any capacity whatsoever,” Mr Okoye noted.
