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22 — Vanguard, SEPTEMBER MONDAY 19, 2022<br />
EETE<br />
TT<br />
M<br />
PPP<br />
The baseline<br />
is that in<br />
stable<br />
democracies,<br />
the cost is far<br />
lower, and part<br />
of the cost that<br />
we pay is the<br />
cost of absence<br />
of trust in<br />
public<br />
institutions<br />
•Prof Mahmood Yakubu<br />
N305 BILLION 2023 ELECTION BUDGET<br />
We are paying for lack of<br />
trust — Prof Mahmood Yakubu<br />
WITH approximately 97million voters, who will vote at 176,846 locations scattered around 8800 wards, 774 local<br />
government areas in the country, and a deployment of 1.4million (one million, four hundred thousand) staff for<br />
a six-hour election to be held twice or national and state elections, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the National Chairman<br />
of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, along with his national and resident electoral<br />
commissioners have their work cut out for them.<br />
"There are 15 countries in West Africa, excluding Nigeria. The voter population in the other 14 countries as at last year<br />
was 73 million. The voter population of Nigeria as at 2019 was 84 million. So, there are 11 million more voters than the<br />
other 14 countries combined. Each time Nigeria goes to the polls, it is like the entire West Africa voting. This will give<br />
you the idea of the size of what we are facing”, according to Professor Yakubu.<br />
Being a prayerful nation, INEC needs our prayers. But prayers alone do not make a free, fair and credible election.<br />
Nigerians must participate and do what is right so that the N305billion cost of the election does not go to waste by being<br />
complicit in disrupting the process or by not voting for the type of leadership that will provide good governance. At the<br />
interactive session organised by the Nigeria Guild of Editors, NGE, last Friday, Yakubu fielded questions and expressed<br />
the desire to deliver the best election in Nigeria’s history: "Our vision for the 2023 election is actually to conduct one of<br />
the best general elections in Nigeria which is going to be free, fair, credible, transparent, inclusive, and verifiable.<br />
People can sit down to see the result of their polling units Online from the comfort of their homes. The most important<br />
place during an election is the polling unit. Once you protect the integrity of the process at the polling unit, what we<br />
need to do is to protect the coalition. Once the people see the result online, we would have taken a very giant step."<br />
Doing the yeoman’s job of this transcipt is Olayinka Ajayi who sat through the about four hours of the session.<br />
By Jide Ajani<br />
Cost of election<br />
The Appropriate question to<br />
ask is why are elections<br />
expensive or how do you<br />
determine the cost of<br />
elections? Elections are<br />
expensive simply because of<br />
the way we conduct our<br />
elections. The baseline is that<br />
in stable democracies, the<br />
cost is far lower. And part of<br />
the cost that we pay is the cost<br />
of absence of trust in public<br />
institutions. In France, the<br />
ballot paper is like an A4<br />
sheet of paper because it is<br />
unthinkable that anybody in<br />
France would snatch the<br />
ballot paper. But here in<br />
Nigeria, we print the ballot<br />
paper to currency quality,<br />
entrust the ballot paper with<br />
the Central Bank of Nigeria,<br />
CBN, for instance, then move<br />
the ballot paper like the<br />
movement of the national<br />
currency just to protect the<br />
process. This is not going to<br />
be done cheaply.<br />
Paying for lack of trust<br />
So, we pay for the cost of lack<br />
of trust in the system. But how<br />
do you measure the cost of an<br />
election? You spread the<br />
entire cost per voter and if you<br />
do so, Nigeria’s election is not<br />
even the most expensive. The<br />
last election we conducted in<br />
Ghana, if you take the voter<br />
population per capita in<br />
relation to the cost, it was<br />
actually more expensive than<br />
Nigeria's election. Kenya had<br />
its election last month, it was<br />
actually the most expensive<br />
election ever conducted in<br />
Kenya and the most expensive<br />
in Africa. What they spent<br />
was much higher than Nigeria<br />
for a voter population of<br />
22million as against our<br />
Elections<br />
cannot be<br />
better than<br />
the . context<br />
in which<br />
they are<br />
conducted<br />
projected 94 to 95 million<br />
registered voters. The cost per<br />
person in Nigeria I think, is<br />
$9 as against what happens<br />
in other countries. Once you<br />
browse the internet, you will<br />
see the cost of elections. So<br />
ours is not even the most<br />
expensive election. The cost<br />
of the election in 2023 is<br />
N305billion of the national<br />
Budget. The national budget<br />
this year is over N17 trillion,<br />
the cost of election is just 1.8<br />
per cent. it's not even 2 per<br />
cent of the national budget.<br />
So, yes, while N305 billion is<br />
quite a huge amount of<br />
money, but if you remove<br />
technology cost, 60 per cent<br />
of the cost of election is spent<br />
on logistics and personnel<br />
allowances. For the two<br />
elections, we will engage<br />
1.4million Nigerians. They<br />
have to be paid, they have to<br />
be transported to various<br />
locations. I must also say<br />
every Nigerian is an auditor<br />
of INEC. In fact, the Electoral<br />
Act says that when you go to<br />
your polling unit the first<br />
thing you do is to check an<br />
inventory of all the materials:<br />
from ballot boxes to the voting<br />
cubicle, to the result sheet, to<br />
the ballot papers, to scissors,<br />
envelops and in one of the<br />
polling units they'll have to<br />
see the stamp pad because the<br />
law says so. All these<br />
materials are delivered,<br />
there's a cost associated with<br />
these materials. There is a<br />
joke that in a remote area<br />
where there's no<br />
development, ballot boxes get<br />
there. But what Nigerians<br />
don't say is that the ballot<br />
boxes did not just get there,<br />
somebody took it there and<br />
each time we make<br />
preparation for elections<br />
budget because we do our<br />
elections in two faces,<br />
(National and State Elections)<br />
actually some of the ballot<br />
boxes never come back, some<br />
stolen, some smashed. The<br />
last time we conducted<br />
general elections, we had to<br />
engage more than 80, 000<br />
vehicles for the elections and<br />
in the riverine areas we<br />
engaged boats for electoral<br />
logistics. So each time we<br />
make procurement, we have<br />
a 10 per cent buffer in case.<br />
So that is the reality of<br />
conducting an election in<br />
Nigeria. As we continue to<br />
build trust, the cost of<br />
elections is going to come<br />
down.<br />
Support from donor<br />
agencies<br />
I know that the commission<br />
receives support from global<br />
partners, but we don't receive<br />
cash from global partners.<br />
There are areas where we<br />
never accept support from<br />
anybody. The core electoral<br />
activities like election<br />
technologies, sensitive<br />
materials, voter registration<br />
are the responsibilities of the<br />
federal government. So they<br />
have to make resources<br />
available for this. In other<br />
words, it may look expensive<br />
once every four years,<br />
because it doesn't happen<br />
every year, but we will<br />
continue to build public<br />
confidence in the system that<br />
would have a consequential<br />
impact on the cost of elections.<br />
Continues on page 23