The National officials and Resident Electoral Commissioners and Administrative Secretaries of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the North-east are meeting in Gombe for the Zonal retreat.
They will Review/Validate the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan and Strategic Programme of Action to produce a working document for future elections.
The host Resident Electoral Commissioner, Gombe State Office, Alhaji Umar Ibrahim, said the two documents would provide an actionable blueprint that would guide all activities of the Commission in the next four years, to ensure the successful conduct of elections.
He said they include series of activities that were marked, indicating when to start voter registration among others, to enable INEC assess its performances as they progress.
“These are actions meant to happen up to after elections. So, the current one will end by the end of this year. So, it’s a four-year plan and it will end by the end of this year, so the next one will up immediately, by January next year,” Alhaji Ibrahim said.
He said ”the documents would cover activities related to the preparations and conduct of the 2023 General Election and all off-season governorship elections.”
Alhaji Ibrahim had said States in the North-east Zones studied and reviewed the documents ahead of the zonal meeting in Gombe for the desired inputs.
The Gombe State Resident Electoral Commissioner said Electoral Officers and Management Staff had and would take an additional look at the documents and make combined inputs that would guarantee value addition.
He said the study and review of the two documents would never be enough until their final validation, which were expected to come out soon.
According to him, ”the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan and the Strategic Programme of Action will take-over from the 2017 -2021 Plan, when finally adopted by end of this year.”
“Our experience with the previous Plan when harvested and invested into the upcoming Plan will remove or minimise the encumbrances and challenges we had during the implementation of the one that will expire in few months to come. So, as field officers and very experienced for that matter, our contributions are critical to the success of objectives for which the Plan stands,” he stated.
He said the objectives of the Plan covered five critical areas, with specific key activities identified by the authors of the draft document,
“Let us analyse and measure the congruency of the intended outcomes against the objectives and pick out any hole that will constitute a challenge and recommend for its correction or amendment based on our local experience as field officers. And while doing so.,” Alhaji Ibrahim explained.
He said because of the peculiarities of the North-east Zone, the meeting would to take note of security issues capable of affecting the discharge of efficient electoral duties.
Mercy Chukwudiebere
