2019 POLLS: Storage, movement of election materials gulp N1bn- INEC

It has been revealed that the Independent National Electoral Commission is to devote over N1bn to storage and movement of election materials by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) respectively.

The said amount is to be spent on storing and conveying of sensitive and non-sensitive electoral materials across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

While the Central Bank of Nigeria is in charge of storing materials within its vaults in all its branches nationwide, the Nigerian Air Force has been in charge of airlifting the materials to the respective states.

A copy of INEC’s 2019 election project plan reads in part, “Provision for Central Bank of Nigeria charges for storage and logistics including NAF charges: N1,050,000, 000.00.

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“Storage and logistics of sensitive election materials in all our 36 states and FCT at CBN for the two elections at N28,378,378.38.”

The Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, had said at a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday that the Air Force deployed eight aircraft to airlift 633,790kg of sensitive and non-sensitive materials for the polls.

He added that the aircraft flew 340 hours in 257 sorties with about 120 crew members involved, comprising pilots, technicians and other specialties operating round the clock.

It was learnt that a lot of time, money and energy were expended on logistics because of many errors on the part of INEC.

Some of the items were wrongly distributed, which ultimately led to a postponement of the polls, thereby making it necessary for certain expenses to be repeated.

For instance, some result sheets for the presidential and National Assembly elections meant for Imo State were discovered to be in Gombe and Ondo states. Similarly, some result sheets meant for Gombe State had been found in Imo State.

Similarly, the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in charge of Kwara State, Mallam Attahiru Madami, said that the result sheets meant for the state were mistakenly taken to Abuja, while some meant for Lagos were mistakenly delivered in Kwara.

According to him, some of Lagos result sheets were also taken to Nasarawa State.

The mix-up of election materials was also said to have incurred extra expenses.

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