The speculations that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was preparing for a massive re-organisation of the commission became a reality after the electoral body announced a major shake-up; redeploying, transferring and ultimately retiring some of its 67 directors.
The re-organisation also included the reduction of the departments from 26 to nine while the directorates were reduced to 10 as officials say this was aimed at creating more effective administration and close monitoring of activities of the staff.
There had been reports of serious apprehension at INEC concerning the exercise as it was discovered that many of the directors had reached retirement age.
The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Kayode Idowu, while confirming the re-organisation, said there were fewer departments in the commission being headed by people who are considered best suited to make the departments functional as against what obtained previously.
According to him, some departments were merged and the civil society, gender, voter education and public affairs departments are now collectively known as the department of voter education, public relations and civil society.
Under the exercise, he said, the leadership would be reconfigured because the commission had a number of directors in the system and a lot of options had been put on the table adding that the new departments would be headed by directors and there would also be directorates. He said that all the directors could not be accommodated with what was on ground.
He further said that there had been a lot of “mind rubbing and nobody would be shortchanged.” He said part of the options that was put on the table was that those who had a short time left in the service were given an option of taking their pay upfront or to stay and be reassigned. In this case, they are being urged to retire voluntarily or be re-assigned to other areas.
He said the re-organization was on the recommendations of INEC consultant, PricewaterhouseCoopers that the number of staff in the commission had become too large. Idowu said the commission would soon commence continuous voter’s registration in 8,809 wards in the country, and that when the commission did the recruitment exercise in 2012, only 1,500 people were recruited; and to do the exercise there was a need to deploy more staff across the country.
He said: “the number of staff we have is not sufficient, because if you are looking at the number of wards, everybody at INEC will be fully utilized.”
