Aggrieved INEC Staff Accuses HRM Of Nepotism, Favourism At Abuja’s Headquarters

There is a growing discontent among the staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) due to alleged favouritism and biases in the posting officers to favour a segment of the country.

It was alleged that a certain individual (named withheld), who happened to be the new Director of Human Resources (HRM), had been overriding the postings approved by the Commission’s Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu and replacing them with his own kinsmen.

The new HRM Director is said to be fond of threating or victimizing individuals from southern part of the country on even on flimsy excuses.

Besides ethnicity, religion was also alleged to be another tool being used to favour or disfavour staffers with those from the southern part of the country being at the receiving end. Naturally, this is having its own toll on the primary or core duties of the commission which are the electoral processes.

For instance, a Director from a section in the Southern part of the country whose tenure is to end in December, 2025 had been made redundant with the appointment of someone else to take his position.

The directorate headed by the said officer is pivotal in the statutory operations of the Commission.

The aggrieved staffers stated that they are expressing their disenchantment for the public to know what they are going through with the hope that the authority concerned would rectify the said anomalies “as INEC is constitutional established for all Nigerians. A situation where an ethnic group would be made to be superior to other ethnic blocks is not what the Commission is meant to be. We can no longer fold our arms and watch as tribalism becomes the yardstick for assigning roles and responsibilities in the Commission”, they added.

They went further to state that the way some staff members of the Commission are being treated is against the prescriptions in Section 14 (3) of the Nigerian Constitution and Section of the Federal Character Commission (Established Act).

“We are not asking to be given any preferential treatment. All we are asking for are fairness, equity, and a situation where merit rather than favourism, ethnicity or nepotism would be the criteria for promotion, posting etc.,”

Records indicated that discontent at the Commission had been taking place at one time or the other. A case in point was that of three former officers of the Commission who challenged their dismissal at the National Industrial Court.

In December 2019, a court judgment given by Honorable Justice Sanusi Kado of NIC reported that the court declared the dismissals of the claimants illegal, null, and void.

The court ordered INEC to reinstate the claimants and pay all their outstanding salaries. Additionally, a cost of Three Hundred Thousand Naira (₦300,000) was awarded against the Commission in favor of the claimants.

The claimants were Messrs. Ajani Omotosho, Busari Niyi, and Danjuma Omale.

Efforts made to get the response of the Electoral Commission proved abortive as calls made to the its chief press secretary were unsuccessful.