INEC plans about 1.4 million temporary workers for more than 176,000 polling units. Its chairman says INEC staff welfare was among the lowest in the country.

INEC plans to put about 1.4 million temporary workers into more than 176,000 polling units for 2027. INEC Chairman Joash Amupitan said so in August. Spread evenly, that is about eight people per unit.

They are called ad hoc staff. They include the presiding officers and assistant presiding officers who run a polling unit on election day.

INEC recruited more than 1.4 million of them in 2023 too. Four weeks after the presidential election, a presiding officer in Ward 11, Alakuko, Lagos told ICIR she hadn’t been paid. She withheld her name. “I and some people still haven’t seen our money,” she said. She said 82 of the 91 people in her ward’s WhatsApp group were in the same position.

A second presiding officer, in Kosofe, said staff were engaged at ₦13,000 each. INEC’s chief press secretary, Rotimi Oyekanmi, gave a different account. He said the commission provided enough money for every ad hoc worker. He said many complaints turn out untrue, and that some workers gave wrong account numbers, so transfers bounced.

Two accounts. ICIR’s report doesn’t settle them.

On 24 July, Amupitan told INEC staff in Minna that when he took office he found the welfare package among the lowest in the country. INEC had started a review of staff packages, he said. He said results would follow.

On Monday, he said INEC is working with the EFCC, the ICPC and the NFIU to track illegal campaign spending. Elections should be decided by the voter’s conviction, he said, not the depth of a candidate’s pocket.

INEC says the register goes to political parties on 15 December. What the 1.4 million will be paid for 2027 hasn’t appeared in any report cited here. Neither has the outcome of the staff review.