Mike Igini, a former Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has warned that partisan figures systematically tamper with rosters of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members enlisted for election duties to swing voting outcomes.
Speaking on ARISE NEWS, Igini described a scheme where political actors bypass standard procedures by inserting unauthorized individuals onto state-level deployment registers, equipping them with authentic corps uniforms, and dispatching them to polling stations as purported ad-hoc workers.
According to Igini, the Director-General of the NYSC must personally certify and scrutinize the roster of corps members designated for electoral assignments, cautioning that planting unverified personnel at voting centers severely compromises the integrity of the ballot.
Concerns surrounding the manipulation of temporary polling staff have persisted across several Nigerian election cycles. Ahead of the 2019 general polls, reports revealed that political interests were actively attempting to dictate the appointment of collation officers, triggering internal friction over personnel management within the electoral body.
To safeguard the process against grassroots interference, INEC previously centralized the appointment of returning and collation officers. Festus Okoye, who served as a national commissioner at the time, noted that the agency opted to source academic personnel directly through university heads, followed by security vetting.
Discrepancies in ad-hoc personnel records were documented by the commission as far back as its post-mortem review of the 2015 general elections. That assessment uncovered inconsistencies between the corps population recorded at NYSC headquarters and the counts physically present across various states, leading to recommendations for rigorous vetting prior to election deployment.
Controversies over staff rosters resurfaced ahead of the August 2026 Osun gubernatorial race, with public allegations claiming that certified presiding officers in councils like Egbedore and Atakunmosa East and West were swapped out for unvetted substitutes.
