By: Ade Adeleke
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has trained over 50 journalists on procedures of covering the October 10 governorship election in Ondo state.
The commission also announced that over 17,000 ad-hoc staff will be engaged for the governorship election.
Disclosing this at a training workshop organised for over 50 journalists on procedures of 2020 Ondo State Governorship election, the INEC National Commissioner, Barr Festus Okoye said 15,000 ad-hoc staff who will work at the polling unit constitutes Serving Corp members and student of Federal institutions.
The 50 journalists who participated included print, broadcast and online political reporters.
Other ad-hoc staff include Supervising Presiding Officers (SPO) and Collation officers (CO) who are Civil Servants from Federal parastatals and senior staff of Federal Universities respectively.
The National Commissioner insisted that the manual transmission of results would still be adopted, contrary to insinuation that the commission would use electronic transmission.
Okoye who is also the Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee at INEC, added that INEC only provide moral and intellectual guide while Nigerians are the one conducting elections.
He noted that the commission is working with Presidential Task Force on Covid19 and National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to provide Thermometer for temperature check at all the polling units in the State.
The National Commissioner stated further that all voters must put on their face mask while coming to the polling unit on election day otherwise such voter will be disenfranchised. He added that other Covid19 precautionary measures like physical distancing will be observed at the polling units.
In his remark, the NUJ Chairman in Ondo State, Adetona Aderoboye advised INEC for timely release of vital information to journalists and also appealed to the electoral umpire to be fair to all political parties in the election.
The National Commissioner and his team also held consultative meeting with media executives in the state.