The Independent National Electoral Commission has proposed N305 billion as expenditure for the 2023 general elections.
The Chairman of Electoral body, Prof. Mahmud Yakubu, who made this known before the Senate Committee on Appropriations, said, the N305 billion is different from the N40 billion yearly budget of the electoral body.
He said though N100 billion had been given the Commission out of the total projected expense, but would not be enough for adequate preparation.
He said: “The commission made a submission through the executive being part of the executive body.
“We made a submission for N305 billion for the 2023 general elections in a very comprehensive 22-page document with 260 budget lines.
“In submitting the executive proposal to the National Assembly, the sum of of N140 billion 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 N140 billion was broken into two, we take it that N40 billion is our regular budget as an agency of Government and N100 billion was the first tranche of the 2022 budget and we have gone ahead to make provisions accordingly.
“For the N40 billion 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 eight bye-election pending, three Federal constituencies and five State Constituencies.
“In fact, the last vacancy occurred only last Wednesday following the death of a member represent Jiwa West in Kaduna State.”
The INEC Chairman explained to the lawmakers activities that must be carried out ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Yakubu said: “What we have done is to look at the activities that we have to conduct before the general election.
“There are activities that must be concluded.
“For instance, if you are going to replace some of the critical facilities like ballot boxes, voting cubicles, these things must be done before the election.
“Party primaries must be conducted and concluded before the election and names of candidates submitted, registration of voter’s would have to be concluded before the election.
“Printing of the Permanent Voter’s Card would have to be concluded before the election and then some of the critical election technology for the 2023 general election must be concluded and procured before the election.”
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