Details of what the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, told the Senate Committee on INEC concerning the conduct of the 2019 general elections has emerged.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on INEC, Senator Suleiman Nazif led the committee members in a meeting with INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, and other INEC Commissioners on Wednesday.
In the details of the meeting made available to journalists by the New Media Department, Office of the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, the INEC chairman assured the lawmakers that the election will be hitch free if the needed funds were provided.
He also gave a total breakdown of the voters’ registration exercise and other INEC’s activities so far.
Yakubu told the Senate, “I thank members of this Committee for suspending your recess to attend to this very important national issue.
“For the first time, this budget is subjected to scrutiny by the National Assembly and the Nigerian people. I am happy to be a part of this process.
“As at Saturday, we have registered 12.1 new voters. Adding this to the 70million voter register, we have over 80million registered voters. The general elections are just around the corner.
“Mr. Chairman, I wish to draw the attention of this Committee to the fact that there is a difference of N69billion in the budgets of 2015 and 2019.
“In 2015, we had 70million registered voters. As of last week Saturday, we now have over 80million registered voters.
“All major activities are pegged against the total number of voters. In 2015, we had only 42 political parties. We now have 91 registered political parties eligible to take part in the 2019 general elections.
“We are hoping that all the political parties will have seamless congresses and primaries. Another issue that we have accounted for, is the processing costs of nominations.
“The cost of logistics is also different in 2019 as opposed to 2015, because the pump price of petrol in 2015, is different from that of 2019. This will also have an impact.
“With the increase in voters, we will have to increase the number of voting points. And with the increase in voting points, we will also have an increase in Ad-Hoc Staff.
“We have provided a line-by-line explanation and account of this budget to the Distinguished Senators.
“The electoral act demands that we continue voter registration. Based on the budgetary provision in 2017, we could only do PVC registration at the LGA level.
“By the end of the Second Quarter of 2017, we had over 1400 registration centres across the country.
“The funds we had were not adequate. This is why in 2018, we approached the National Assembly for additional funding.
“If the Electoral Act is not signed into law, we will continue to operate within the ambits of the law as it exists.
“Even if the Electoral Act is not signed into law, we need to continue to improve our electoral process to promote transparency.
“Why is our contingency low? If it had been 10%, it would have been considered too high. Now it is 2.5%, it is too low. However, there are some contingencies that we need to expect.
“There is no conflict in the letters. If you add up the requests by the President and INEC, they add up. The sequence of disbursement is up for the legislature and the executive to decide.”
