Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has come out to give reasons why conducting elections in Nigeria is expensive.
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| Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu |
The INEC Boss said this on Friday when he appeared on ‘The Editors’ Forum’ in Lagos. A Programme which was put together by the Nigerian Guild of Editors, hosted at De Rembrandt Hotel, Obafemi Awolowo Way, Ikeja, Lagos.
Some of the reasons he mentioned include “cost of logistics, highly-secured ballot papers, allowances for personnel”.
He said: “In France, the ballot paper is like an A4 sheet of paper, because it is unthinkable that anybody in France will snatch the ballot paper.
“But here in Nigeria, we print ballots papers in currency quality and we entrust them to the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“The ballot papers will now be moved with all the protocols and security according to the movement of the national currency, just to protect the process.
“This is not going to be done cheaply. So, we pay for lack of trust in the system.”
Prof. Yakubu went ahead to buttress that the cost of conducting elections in Nigeria is not even the highest compared to some other parts of the world.
“If the entire cost was spread per head of the voting population, projected to be about 95 million.”
Yakubu said: “The cost in Nigeria, I think, is nine dollars per head (N4, 500) as against what happens in other countries. Ours is not even the most expensive.
“The cost of elections in Nigeria in 2023 is N305 billion of the national budget of over N17 trillion.
“The cost of elections is just 1.8 per cent, not even up to two per cent of the national budget.
“If we remove the technology cost, 60 per cent of the cost of elections in Nigeria is spent on logistics and personnel allowances.”
The Electoral Body Chairman disclosed, at least 1.4 million Nigerians will be engaged for National and State Elections as ad hoc staff who will surely be paid as well as transported to their different locations.
“I am sure as we continue to build trust and confidence in the process, the cost of elections will come down considerably,” he said.
The INEC Boss said “we are almost there”, when he talked about electronic voting in the country.
