Pecohub Mike Igini, a former Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has claimed that politicians infiltrate the list of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members recruited as election officials to compromise elections.
Igini said this during an interview on ARISE NEWS on Tuesday. He claimed that people could be inserted into the list at the state level and supplied with NYSC uniforms before being deployed as election officials.
“The NYSC is usually infiltrated. The list is infiltrated, and that’s why the recommendation has already been the DG of NYSC. You must certify the integrity of the list of NYSC,” he said.
He argued that the Director General of the NYSC should verify the integrity of the lists submitted for election duties. Igini warned that compromised personnel could undermine the electoral process at polling units.
WE HAVE HEARD THIS BEFORE
Igini is not the first person to speak about or signal interference of this nature in a Nigerian election.
For instance, in February 2019, Tribune reported, quoting sources within INEC, that powerful political interests were attempting to influence the recruitment and deployment of collation officers ahead of the general election.
The report stated that politicians were pressuring officials within the commission to give their parties an advantage. It also described internal disagreements over who should control the recruitment process.
INEC subsequently explained that it had centralised the recruitment of collation and returning officers to protect the integrity of elections and reduce the risk of politicians influencing officials recruited locally.
Festus Okoye, then an INEC national commissioner,said the commission obtained names of university lecturers and professors through their institutions and subjected them to security screening before assigning them to election duties.
INEC REPORT IDENTIFIED VERIFICATION PROBLEMS
The commission itself, about a decade ago, had reported issues about the integrity of election personnel lists.
In its review of the 2015 general elections, INEC reported that there were differences between the numbers of serving corps members reported by the NYSC headquarters and the numbers actually present in some states.
The report also stated that issues arose in employment of ad hoc election personnel, including staff availability and deployment difficulties.
Among its recommendations, the commission said NYSC members should be verified before their names were submitted to INEC for deployment to election duties.
OSUN STAFF-SUBSTITUTION CLAIM WAS DISPUTED
Ahead of the August 2026 Osun governorship election, claims circulated on social media that INEC officials had replaced trained presiding officers and assistant presiding officers with people who had neither been shortlisted nor trained.
This was reported on August 14, following a post by a ‘Duke of Osun’ that identified Egbedore, Atakunmosa East and Atakunmosa West as the affected local government areas.
