By Haruna Salami
Senate Committee on Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has urged the commission to do all within its powers
to bring down the cost of elections in the country.
This call was made Wednesday when INEC appeared before the committee to defend its budget of N189 billion for 2019general election.
Chairman, Senate Committee on INEC, Senator Suleiman Nazif expressed surprise that while it cost the county N120 billion to conduct 2015 general elections, the commission is requesting for the sim of N189 billion for 2019, a difference of N69 billion.
The INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu told the committee that it was the first time in the history of Nigeria that INEC budget was subjected scrutiny by National Assembly and expressed his delight that he was part of that process.
According to him many factors are responsible for the increase in the cost of elections such as increase in the number of political parties from 78 to 91 and that of registered voters from 70 million to 82 million.
Prof. Yakubu told the committee that the number of political parties affect the size of ballot paper to be printed. Other factors that raise the cost of elections according to him include monitoring of political parties primary elections and processing of nomination forms of candidates by INEC.
The committee therefore urged INEC to deregister some political parties it described as “brief case” parties, but the problem there is that even when INEC did so in past under the Elecyoral Act, the courts used the constitution, which is the highest law in the land to reinstate such parties.
The INEC chairman used the forum to inform the committee that it recently received 144 applications for registration as political parties out of which it registered 23 new ones.