2023: INEC Signs MOU With Transportation Workers For Efficient Logistics Delivery

INEC on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the road transportation and marine workers’ unions to facilitate efficient and successful logistics delivery for 2023 general elections.

The unions include the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), the National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) and the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN).

INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, at the signing ceremony, said that the commission would require 100,000 vehicles and about 4,200 boats for the general elections.

“The signing of a revised MoU with the road and marine transport unions today is a demonstration of our determination to implement key recommendations of the review exercise to enhance forward and reverse logistics in our electoral operations.

“The 2023 General Elections will involve the nationwide deployment of over one million personnel and massive quantities of materials twice within a period of two weeks from our state offices to 774 Local Government Areas; 8,809 Electoral Wards and 176,846 polling units across the length and breadth of our country.

“It will require over 100,000 vehicles and about 4,200 boats that will be accompanied by naval gunboats.

“This is a huge undertaking that must be accomplished in the next 66 days and we are resolute in doing so, to give Nigerians a pleasant voting experience.”

Yakubu assured Nigerians that INEC was determined that all polling units nationwide would open at 8.30 a.m. on Feb. 25, 2023 for the Presidential and National Assembly elections and on March 11, 2023 for the Governorship and State House of Assembly elections.

Yakubu said that in order to ensure that personnel and materials arrived polling units before voters on election day, INEC required large numbers of vehicles, including motorcycles, tricycles, boats and canoes in the riverine areas which could not be met from its internal resources.