The Kano State Independent Electoral Commission (KANSIEC) says it is to committing about N2.3 billion to the printing and purchase of election materials in preparation for the local council poll slated to hold on January 16th, next year (2021) in the state.
The commission says it is also set to recruit about 48,000 ad-hoc staff that will be involved in the conduct of the election, the second that the commission will be conducting since the assumption of office by the current administration of Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje.
Professor Garba Ibrahim Sheka, chairman of the Commission, made this disclosure on Monday when a delegation of the Executive Council of the Kano Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), paid a courtesy call on him in his office in Kano.
Sheka stated that all arrangements for the printing of the election materials locally have been completed, noting that the local contractors entrusted with the responsibility of printing the items have been fully mobilized for them to deliver the materials on time.
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According to him, the choice of local contractors for the job, as against foreign ones, was to prevent the repeat of the incidence of late delivery of the election materials which characterized the previous election conducted by the commission.
“I am happy to inform your delegation that our commission is fully ready to conduct a credible, free and fair election come January 16th next. And to this effect, as specified by the Electoral Act, as against the 21 days interval required, the commission has issued a 96-day notice for the election, this is to allow for adequate preparation for the exercise.
“Contract for the printing and purchased of election materials have been awarded. This time we are using a contractor, who contrary to what happened in the previous when the election materials were printed oversea, we have resolved to print the materials locally. The printing will engulf the sum of over N2.3 billion, and over 48,000 ad-hoc staff are to be involved in the exercise”, he revealed.
In order to provide adequate enlightenment for the event, we have enlisted the partnership of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), to help educate residents of the state about the election, and the need for them to participate, and conduct themselves peacefully during and after the election, the KANSIEC chairman said.
Commenting on some of the identified challenges that might confront the commission as regards the election, Professor Sheka said that it ranges from the effect of ravaging Covid-19 pandemic on human interactions, to the issue of some Social Media influencers, who might want to deploy their platforms cause confusion before, during, and after the election.
In his address earlier, Ibrahim Garba, chairman of the Kano Correspondents` Chapel of the NUJ, told the KANSIEC `s chairman that the visit was organized for purpose of examining areas of collaboration between the organizations as regards the coming Local Council Poll in the state.
Garba, who described the media as one of the critical stakeholders in the election process, commended the leadership of the commission for starting the preparation for the election on time, noting that such early preparation would go a long way in making the election a success.
As a way of supporting the conduct of the election, he informed the KANSIEC leadership that his chapel plans to organized a workshop on Election Reporting for it members, as well as local media staff operating, and call for the support of the commission in staging the workshop.
