By Simon Ebegbulem
BENIN—FORMER Senate Chief whip, Senator Rowland Owie, has faulted the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to use serving members of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, for the 2011 general elections.

He said that corps members could easily be influenced through financial inducement by politicians, adding that rather than use NYSC members, INEC should recruit public officers and university lecturers, who would not want to ruin their careers.

Senator Owie, who warned the Prof. Attahiru Jega-led INEC to ensure that it conducts a free and fair elections in 2011,  in order not to cause crisis in the country, argued that “elections should be restricted to polling clerks and polling orderlies from the level of presiding officers to supervising presiding officers.”

The Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, chieftain who spoke to newsmen in Benin City, yesterday, said “the people to conduct this election must be federal public officers and university lecturers and staff. These employed staff still have regard for their future in the public service and there is a limit to which they would want to ruin their careers.

“To put the conduct of a major election in the hands of young men and women, who do not have careers yet and struggling to get a monthly allowance of N8,000 as allowance, is to make the 2011 elections cash and carry business, and the election will be the worse in the history of this country,” he said.