Civil Society Organisations (CSOS) on the platform of the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) have lamented the high costs of election management in Nigeria, while calling on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to make public
its expenditure of over N120bn during the 2015 general elections.

The CSOs have also called on INEC to make public its expenditure on cost of voter education and mobilization during the
elections, while speaking with Journalists in Abuja Yesterday at the Public Presentation of TMGs Final report on Mobilizing,
Organising and Educating Citizens for Participation and Observation of the Pre- election and March 28th Election Day
Process in Abia and Imo States.

The CSOs demanded that Nigerians begin to build volunteerism as a means to reducing costs of elections as done in other parts of
the world towards saving cost and also ensuring credible leaders who will ensure continuity of the process already began by
the INEC in forthcoming elections.

Speaking with Journalists,Head of Research and Policy, Youth Initiative for Advocacy Growth and Advancement (YIAGA) Samson
Itodo who made the call in his Goodwill message revealed that” information available has revealed that the INEC has spent a little close to 120-125 billion naira for the elections”

He said “Though election is a very expensive activity especially for a country like Nigeria which has a huge electoral demography and a vast population, However there is need to cut down on the cost of elections by exploring volunteerism as well as print Permanent Voters cards during the Continuous Voters exercises which would save cost rather than printing TVCs during the Continuous Voters Registration exercises”

The Youth Advocate called for “the appointment of a leadership of proven integrity with the capacity to ensure continuity and sustainability in the reforms already began by the INEC which had led to the success of the 2015 elections”

“We cannot repeatedly year in year out continue to procure machines for the conduct of our elections, the data capture
machines released in 2011, if you look at when it came to the 2015 elections, we needed to buy batteries for the machines,
now we have purchased card reader machines and the fate of the card readers is very important, does INEC have sufficient
storage to keep these machines that they are safe and sound to be used for the Kogi, Edo and Bayelsa elections respectively? He
queried

He said “INEC spends a lot for the recruitment of ADHOC staff, which is quite understandable, however as Citizen we should be ready to make sacrifices and as we advance in our democracy we need to explore volunteers that can help INEC in the
conduct of their elections which could lead to a cut down on costs of recruiting officials, this can be driven by creativity and
innovation , because we cannot in a blanket way say this is the cost which cannot be sustainable”

Similarly Deputy Director MacArthur Foundation, Dayo Olaide stressed the need to improve the INEC on areas of technology
which he said was the major challenge of the electoral body during the 2015 elections.


Cc:lalasticlala

Source: http://leadership.ng/news/443101/csos-demand-breakdown-of-n120bn-inec-election-expenditure