2024 Budget: ‘It’s Too Poor’, INEC Chairman, Yakubu Rejects N40bn Allocation Wants N89bn

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has rejected the allocated budget of N40 billion, deeming it grossly inadequate for its operational needs.

VerseNews reports that INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu presented a draft proposal of N89 billion to the Senate Committee on INEC during a budget defense meeting, explaining that the N40 billion would only cover personnel costs, leaving little for capital, electoral, and overhead expenses.

Yakubu warned that insufficient funds might jeopardize the 2024 off-season governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states and National Assembly bye-elections in Ebonyi South, Yobe East, and other constituencies.

He emphasized the need for adequate funding to ensure staff welfare, conduct continuous voter registration, monitor primaries, and address various operational costs.

Mahmood said: “Our first priority is staff welfare; it goes beyond that, but it is a matter of human rights. But associated with the payment of salaries are the social contributions, the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), group life insurance, employees compensation scheme and so on. When we pay salaries and social contributions, there is nothing for any other activity again, including the forthcoming governorship elections coming up next year in Edo and Ondo states.

“We also do electoral activities in February next year in which parties will commence the primaries for the governorship elections, and we have to be there to monitor the primaries. We have to do continuous voter registration, and make the cards available long before the elections, and there’s no provision for that. The Ondo primary will begin in April, and there’s no provision for that.

“By the time you talk about the DTA as provided by circular and you convert it to Naira and kobo, it crashes, given the exchange rate. So, under the overhead, we pay for all these, including issues like diesel for our generators because sometimes, we are almost always on generator not only in our conferences but also in our ICT server room.

“As a substitute to the inadequate N40 billion, the INEC chairman submitted another expenditure proposal of N89 billion, which was tagged as the actual need of the commission.

“We have submitted proposal C, which shows that we actually need N89 billion. So as I said, our budget for 2023 is practically N68 billion, so the difference actually is N21 billion, not N49 billion, and we have given a breakdown on how we intend to spend the money.”