INEC’s disturbing request for N126 billion 2025 budget

One could recall the many failures and total imperfections in elections conducted that snowballed into total conundrum of the nation’s democracy when the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu appeared before the Senate and House of Representatives joint Committee on INEC on 5th January to defend INEC’s 2025 budget defence.

Mahmood who was appointed by the former President Muhammadu Buhari on 21st October, 2015 has never added value to the nation’s electoral process in barely ten years, hence, the conduct of elections under his watch has always been fiasco, confusion and utter disappointment to the political players and Nigerians who have long yearned for perfect elections.

Undoubtedly, perfect election has the potential to strengthen democracy, restore confidence and throw up well-meaning Nigerians to make themselves available to contest elections in the interest of development of the nation, but as it were, INEC under Yakubu remains a nightmare to politicians and not even their political rivals during elections.

It’s no gainsaying that humongous fund has been pumped into INEC through appropriation by the National Assembly in anticipation that if funds were judiciously utilized under the items listed, in previous years, electoral processes would have been sanitized much more to the advantage of electoral players, but it’s being a sad story from year to year.

When the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and Permanent Voters Card were introduced by the INEC, with request for sufficient funding, Nigerians were upbeat and in expectation of a new way of conducting election in consonance with the best global practices, but with huge funds committed to the initiative, there are no good testimonies till date.

The very essence of BVAS ended in conduit pipe, the same way funds committed to it under Mahmood ended. The machine which was touted to be a device which would be used to isolate fake votes from genuine ones has never been so. A development that results of one Local Government has surpassed the entire 20 Local Government Council Areas for two electioneering times under the watch of Yakubu.

From State to State during general election, there were cases of INEC staff compromising election processes without subjecting them to in-house disciplinary action. Painfully, these staff of the electoral umpire walk around free and even go to court to defend the cases.

One wonders the questionable election results each year and how INEC’s agents would defend them as principal witness when the said results became subject of litigations. We believe that the 21st century digital age should have enhanced activities of the electoral umpire and not the other way we are seeing. Conducting election in Nigeria is not a rocket science, hence, decrying complications in conducting election in Nigeria as we saw during the budget defence last week by the INEC boss was completely an attempt to confuse the lawmakers.

The increase of INEC’s budget from N40 billion to N126 billion currently before the National Assembly for legislative action is too staggering, humongous and would be a waste if this fund is approved under the leadership of Godswill Obot Akpabio as Senate President.
The 10th National Assembly, it is believed, has wise men and women in Senate and the House of Representatives and Nigerians are counting on them to save the nation of waste of hard earned resources by not approving the sum of N126 billion for INEC. This is at the backdrop of the fact that nothing good could come out of INEC under the current structure.

Also, it will be an honour done to themselves as patriotic Nigerians and elder statesmen to decline approval of N126 billion proposal, even as items raised by the INEC boss for the proposal are not only feeble, there are also unrealistic.

The parliament should be seen to be doing all it could to curb financial leakages and retaining the N40 billion budget since 2025 is not the general election year would be appropriate. This will avoid the surge of INEC’s proposal to a trillion naira in 2027 general election if the current proposal of N126 is sustained.