INEC trains electoral officers ahead Feb. 3 by-elections

The Independent National Electoral commission (INEC) has begun training of electoral officers that will conduct the February 3 by-elections and court-ordered rerun polls across the country.

The training, which started yesterday with the “Training of Trainers” as part of the build-up to the elections, was organised by the Electoral Institute.

The trainers will be involved in the training of election officials and ad hoc workers.

The trainers comprised TEI trainers, selected staff members from collaborating departments (ICT and Electoral Operations) who came to enlighten the trainees on the innovations recently introduced into the election process, while state training officers (STOs) also joined the ToT via Zoom.

The Electoral Institute’s Director General Sa’ad Umar Idris said the workshop’s objective was to ensure that participants would be able to organise and achieve detailed and effective training in all the affected states, after the training.

He said at the end of the exercise, participants, who are coordinating trainers, would be expected to demonstrate the ability to effectively train SPOs as well as presiding officers and assistant presiding officer (POs/APOs) on billing and counting procedures.

They are also to get themselves acquainted to operating the BVAS, have the capacity to upload election result on INEC Result portal using INEC Results Viewing Device (IREV).

He asked participants to acquaint themselves with innovations/new initiatives to enable them easily pass the knowledge to the Supervisory Presiding Officers, Presiding Officers and Assistant Presiding Officers who would be working closely with some of them on Election Day.