Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has said the commission would need a total of N305 billion to conduct the 2023 General elections as well as other elections in 2022.
Yakubu who spoke during a meeting with the Senate Committee on Appropriation at the National Assembly on Monday, noted that the N305bn will be used to cover the expenses of election materials and other miscellaneous.
The INEC boss noted that the N140 billion earmarked for the commission in the 2022 Appropriation bill is grossly inadequate.
According to him, out of the total N140 billion budgeted for the commission, N40 billion is for the regular budget of the commission, noting that the remaining N100 billion is insufficient for the preparation of the 2023 general elections.
Justifying the increase, the INEC boss said the commission has eight bye-elections pending, including Ekiti and Osun governorship elections before the General elections in 2023.
In his words, “In submitting the executive proposal to the National Assembly, the sum of of N140b was made available to INEC as a one-line item in the budget and as usual we broke it down and submitted same to the committee that oversights INEC in both the House and the senate.
“The N140b was broken into two, we take it that N40b is our regular budget as an agency of Government and N100b was the first tranche of the 2022 budget and we have gone ahead to make provisions accordingly.
”For the N40b annual budget including in that are also elections that we are supposed to conduct particularly off-season elections. It may interest the committee to know that we have 8 bye-election pending; three Federal constituencies and five State constituencies. In fact, the last vacancy occured only last Wednesday following the death of a member representing Jiwa west in Kaduna State.”
