By Editor
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, on Wednesday revealed that the number of court cases associated with the 2019 general election has risen to 1700.
Yakubu spoke on Wednesday during the 2021 budget defence before the Senate Committee on INEC.
The committee is chaired by Senator Kabiru Gaya.
Acccording to the INEC Boss “Each time anyone goes to court, INEC is joined, but we have to hire lawyers to defend us. We are not paying fantastic fee, we are applying Federal Ministry of Justice scale of fees.
“If for instance you have a case for governorship election before the supreme court, it’s a maximum of N4.5 million.
“But because of the number of cases, we are almost getting close to 1700 pre-election and post-election cases in 2019 alone, and everyday you hear people going to court and joining INEC, but we will continue to do what we can within available resources” he said.
The INEC boss explained that the commission had completed all preparations to conduct elections in which Nigerians in Diaspora could vote.
It, however, asked Nigerians to wait for such a time the National Assembly would be ready to amend the Constitution and the appropriate laws that currently prohibits participation of persons in the Diaspora in elections.
He said: “The Commission is desirous of giving Nigerians living abroad the right to vote. After all, all our neighboring countries do so. But it requires the amendment to the constitution and the Electoral Act for that to happen.
“And we have already worked out the document. Once the law is amended today, we can roll out. We are ready. We have had several meetings with the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) but we can’t go beyond what the law provides”.
On some groups who are always disenfranchised during elections, Yakubu admitted that that the law should be amended to correct the situation.
“It’s not just those in the armed services, the police involved in election duty, journalists, INEC adhoc staff and some INEC staff don’t vote. The reason is that you are posted for election duty to places other than where you are registered, and the law says you vote where are registered.
“So, if you pass some amendments to the electoral act to enable people to vote, two solution perhaps, early voting, so that those involved in election duty can vote early or major reform of electoral legal framework to allow people to vote wherever they are,” he added.
On voters verification, the INEC Chairman further announced the commencement of another phase of the voters’ registration, adding that the exercise would gulp not less than one billion naira.
“For continuous voter registration, the Commission intend to resume voter registration in the first quarter of 2021. And once we resume, it will be continuous for one and half years, at least until six months to the next general election. In other word, the Commission is not going to resume voter registration for a week, two weeks or a month but we are working out the details,” he said.
Speaking on the need for INEC to be financial independence, Prof. Yakubu said that the Commission cannot be independent unless it is financially independent, adding that there are some activities that happen that are time bound which required the Commission to act swiftly.
He said the INEC fund which was established in 2010 to allow the Commission to discharge those responsibilities became useful some months ago when the Commission was put under serious financial pressure.
“It was established in 2010 but there was no cause to spend from it, and from the last five years this Commission did not spend from it. But what has happened now is our budget for 2020 dropped to N40 billion from N45.5 billion in 2019. And as a result of the 10% COVID cut, it further dropped to N36 billion in the middle of the year when we had already made preparation for expenditure.
“Therefore since that fund is made for the rainy days, I informed the committee that the rainy day has come. So we are taking part of the fund to balance our budget for this year,” the INEC boss said.
Explaining why the commission proposed a budget of N40 billion for 2021, same figure for 2020 budget, the INEC Chairman said that the figure was retained in response to the global challenge of COVID-19 pandemic with shortage of fund.
