#NigeriaDecides: Ahead of Saturday’s general election, the Nigerian Red Cross Society in Kaduna has deployed 360 of its members for emergency response and first aid treatment at some polling centres.
Sunday Awulu, the Secretary of the Kaduna Branch of the society, disclosed this in an interview in Kaduna.
He said that the deployment of its personnel to some of the polling centres was part of their collaboration with the government and other stakeholders.
“We have a contingency plan for the election to see how we can provide our services during the period, particularly in the violence-prone areas.
“The personnel is going there in case of any emergency not only election violence, but in the course of queuing to vote, someone may slump or some issues may come up and people might sustain injuries.”
He added that the members would be deployed to each of the 23 Local Government Areas of the state and some at the headquarters for emergency and first aid treatment.
“We have deployed 15 members to each local government area of the state and also 15 at the headquarters for emergency responses.”
Awulu said the personnel would be stationed at strategic places not close to the polling units.
He explained the members were trained in emergency response and with knowledge on basic first aid to strengthen their capabilities in attending to emergencies.
“We had a training session with them at the ministry of local government to strengthen the response mechanism on how to respond to emergency and render first aid,” the branch secretary said.
Awulu added that the Red Cross Society was making arrangements to facilitate the use of ambulances from the General hospitals in the state during the elections to attend to emergencies.
