Former INEC Commissioner Mike Igini has raised concerns about the alleged manipulation of NYSC lists by politicians to compromise elections ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Speaking on INEC’s readiness, Igini called for the digitisation of the NYSC system to protect the integrity of the list used to recruit polling officials.
“In Nigeria, now what we found by way of experience where we have worked was that the NYSC is usually infiltrated, the list is infiltrated and that’s why the recommendation has only been the digitization of NYSC,” he said.
He alleged that politicians sometimes introduce fake corps members into the system and provide them with NYSC uniforms to serve as polling officials.
“What politicians do is that they will infiltrate the list either at the state level, then we bring in people, sew NYSC uniform for them, so what you find at the polling unit are people actually submitted through compromise to our own staff to conduct election at the level of the polling unit,” Igini stated.
He stressed the importance of technology, warning: “Because any organization that fails to embrace technology will be overtaken by chaos, okay, or decay or decline.”
However, Igini urged Nigerians to recognise their power at polling units, noting that only four officials are normally deployed to each unit.
“The good news to the Nigerian people, this is what you need to know, is that at the polling unit you have only four officials,” he said.
He added that voters outnumber officials across Nigeria’s 176,846 polling units, saying: “Voters will normally outnumber poll officials at the polling unit, that’s where the power of voters lies.”
Recalling his experience supervising elections in Osun State in August 2014, Igini said: “I was the one who superintended the conduct of election in Ife South that won and we shut down all the tricks to rig election in that state.”
