…Says Commission needs 1m staff for elections
The Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), has announced that the 2023 general election will gulp N305 billion.
According to the Commission, the amount is N116 billion higher, compared to N189 billion expended on the 2019 general election.
The INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, made the disclosure in Abuja on Thursday, during the public presentation of the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan (SP) and the 2023 Election Project Plan (EPP).
Giving the breakdown of the figure, Prof. Yakubu disclosed that the Commission will spend N239.2bn to procure voting materials and vehicles for the election and spend N105.2bn to purchase accreditation devices.
The INEC boss said N23.7bn would be spent on the allowance for ad hoc workers, who will be more than one million people, while N23bn was set aside for election logistics expenses.
He revealed that the electoral agency will spend N239.2bn, which constitutes 78.44 percent of the Budget, to purchase ten critical electoral items, which include ballot papers, operational vehicles, ballot boxes and allowances of ad-hoc workers, the printing of result sheets, logistics and procurement of accreditation devices.
The INEC chairman added that N27.1bn, out of the N239.2bn Budget, would be set aside by the Commission for possible run-off elections, including the one for the presidential poll.
Yakubu said the Commission will spend N20.6bn on the printing of ballot papers and N12.7bn on the procurement of non-sensitive materials, while N3.9bn would be spent for the procurement of operational vehicles.
He added that the Commission set aside N9.5bn for the printing of result sheets, N7.8bn for the procurement of ballot boxes, and a separate N5.39bn for the same purpose.
The INEC) also said it would need about one million electoral officials – a combination of permanent, temporary and ad hoc staff – to be deployed to cater to the 176,846 polling units in 8,809 wards and 774 LGAs across the country, for the elections.
While explaining that double registration by any voter remained an electoral offence, Yakubu said, “The election will involve an estimated one million electoral officials (both permanent and temporary or ad-hoc staff) deployed to 176,846 polling units in 8,809 wards and 774 LGAs across the country.
He said the on-going Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise would end on June 30, 2022, while all eligible voters that were yet to register should do so on or before that date if they intended to vote.
Stressing that the PVCs of validly registered voters from the first and second quarters were ready and available for collection at designated centres nationwide, Yakubu said, “I would like to appeal to all Nigerians, who registered between June and December 2021 to collect their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) in person as no PVCs will be collected by proxy”.
