The Independent National Electoral Commission has said that the 2023 general elections will gulp 305 million naira.
According to the commission at least N239.2bn will be spent on procuring voting materials and vehicles that will be used in the 2023 general election which constitute 78.44percent of the total budget.
The analysis was contained in the 2023 General Election Project Plan that was launched by INEC in Abuja on Thursday, April 21.
The Commission stated that the N239.2bn, would be spent on 10 critical items which included ballot papers, operational vehicles, ballot boxes, allowances of ad hoc workers, printing of result sheets, logistics and procurement of accreditation devices.
Also included in the N239.2bn budget is the N27.1bn set aside by the commission for possible run-off elections, including the one for the presidential poll.
A breakdown of the document, further shows that the highest single component will be the procurement of accreditation devices which will gulp N105.2bn. This also constitutes 34.51 per cent of the total election budget of N305bn.
The allowance for ad hoc workers, who will be more than one million people, is pegged at N23.7bn while N23bn was set aside for election logistics expenses which include the movement, deployment and retrieval of men and materials for the elections.
INEC will also spend N20.6bn on the printing of ballot papers and N12.7bn on the procurement of non-sensitive materials. The commission set aside N9.5bn for the printing of result sheets, N7.8bn for the procurement of ballot boxes and a separate N5.39bn for the same purpose. The electoral body will also spend N3.9bn for the procurement of operational vehicles.
In a diagram illustrating a comparative analysis of the 2019 and 2023 general election budgets, INEC noted that while N189bn was set aside for the previous elections, the 2023 general election would gulp N305bn.
