The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu has said N100 billion would not be enough for the electoral body to conduct the next general elections.
He made the declaration on Friday when he appeared before the joint committee of the National Assembly on INEC led by Senator Kabiru Gaya.
Professor Yakubu said the sum of N189 billion was made available by the Ministry of Finance for the 2019 general elections and noted that INEC had since increased the number of polling units across the country ahead of next general elections.
He further disclosed that the offseason elections to be conducted in Southwest states of Ekiti and Osun states alone would gulp the sum of N7 billion.
He said: “The N100 billion is the first tranche for the 2023 general elections while N40 billion is our normal budget for 2022.N189bn was appropriated for the 2019 general elections. So, it cannot be N100 billion only for 2023.
“We are already in touch with the Federal Ministry of Finance on the additional requirements for the 2023 general elections. Either we come to the National Assembly to defend the budget before the committee or we would do what we did in 2019 when the executive just submitted the proposal to the National Assembly and we came to defend it.
“We would need more money because we’ve expanded our polling units and we are introducing new technology for elections among many other new innovations. The number of registered voters will increase beyond the 84 million for the 2019 general elections.
“Some of the things we needed would require four months, some five months while some would require seven months. We will start early preparations now that we have the money early enough and we will just procure sensitive materials for the election.
“We hired 34, 000 vehicles for the 2019 elections so we have plans to also outsource the material distribution in 2023 because we can not afford the cost of buying such a huge number of vehicles and engage the drivers that would drive them.
“Electoral operational and recurrent cost is (conduct of polls) N7.3 billion for the procurement of non-sensitive materials and logistics.
“We also budgeted N7 billion for the conduct of Ekiti and Osun governorship election including the possibility of runoffs.
“We made a provision of N2.6 billion for Ekiti State with a population of over one million registered voters and N4.4bn for Osun with 30 local government areas.
“We are earmarking N4.2 billion for the continuous registration exercise in 2,700 centres.”
Saturday Tribune checks revealed that the N100 billion is aside INEC budget for 2022 which is N40 billion.
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