Two days after cancelling the Edo State
governorship election, the Independent National Electoral Commission
has started counting its losses.
The commission said that it lost over
N100m to the election, which was cancelled because of the security
advice given to it by both the Department of State Services and the
police.
The election, which was scheduled to hold today (Saturday) in the state, had now been rescheduled to September 28.
Both the DSS and the police had claimed
that there were plans by extremists and insurgents to disrupt the
election and also cause mayhem across the country between September 12
and 13.
They had, therefore, called on the
commission to consider the possibility of shifting the election to
enable them to deal with the issue of security problems.
Before the cancellation of the election,
our correspondent gathered that the commission had deployed 18,511
personnel in the state.
The state, which is made up of 18 local
government areas, has 1,925,105 registered voters. It also has 192
registration areas, 2,627 polling units, and 4,011 voting points.
For the botched election, the commission
has deployed one returning officer, 18 local government area collation
officers, 192 registration area collation officers, 263 supervisory
presiding officers and 2,627 presiding officers.
It also deployed 12,036, assistant
presiding officers I, II and III, 2,530 assistant presiding officers,
728 reserve APOs, 19 LGA supervisors and one reserve and 97 RA cluster
supervisors and 1 reserve (2RAs/Supervisor) at the national
headquarters.
INEC’s Deputy Director in charge of
Voter Education and Publicity, Mr. Nick Dazang, told our correspondent
in an interview in Abuja on Saturday, that the cost of not conducting
the election on Saturday was enormous.
He said this was because the commission had fully mobilised for the exercise and was fully prepared for the exercise.
Dazang added that all the officers
mobilised for the exercise had been asked to return to their various
units and offices, adding that only the ad hoc workers, who were
recruited from the state, were asked to stay behind.
Before the election was cancelled, he
said the commission had booked hotels, paid for feeding and made other
payments needed for the comfort of the personnel to enable them perform
their duties.
He regretted that all the money was likely going to be lost.
He said, “Also, we had moblised (before
the cancellation). The cost implication of shifting the election would
be huge. We are talking of more than N100m on the part of the
commission.
“This is different from what the
developmental partners have invested, the non-government organisations,
media and others. The politicians have also invested in this election.
“For example, most of our personnel have
returned to the headquarters, except the ad hoc workers who will stay
back. Money paid to hotel is one of the cost we are losing. We have
budgeted and paid for them. How do we get refund for most of these?”
Also, speaking with our correspondent,
the Director of Voter Education and Publicity at the commission, Mr.
Oluwole Ozasse-Uzi, said that the commission would have to reconfigure
the card readers, which he said were specifically configured for the
cancelled election.
He said shifting the election meant that the card readers would have to be reconfigured.
He said that the commission decided to
postpone the election irrespective of cost implication because security
agencies were part of the electoral process.
He said, “The card readers were
configured for September 10. They have to be re-configured again. We
have more than 6,000 card readers because there is at least one for each
polling booth and unit. We also have some as back up. We get our
funding from the government. We lost money running into millions of
naira.
“We can’t do the election alone. The
security agencies are part of us because they are to secure the
materials and the people- the voters. We could have gone ahead, but if
we did that and things went wrong, what will people say?
“We lost people in an attempt to conduct
election in Rivers State. If we had proceeded, we would have been seen
as an irresponsible organisation.
“We had only distributed non-sensitive
materials such as erasers, pens, posters, bags, papers and ink but
sensitive materials such as ballot papers and result sheets had not
been distributed.”
Asked if the election could be shifted
again, he said there were words of assurance from the security agencies
that things would normalise before September 28.
Meanwhile, the Chief Press Secretary to
the INEC Chairman, Mr. Rotimi Oyekanmi, has said the commission would
re-train its ad hoc staff for the postponed governorship election.
According to him, what was spent so far
on the postponed election included the allowances paid for the training
of 18,000 personnel.
Oyekanmi, in an electronic mail exclusively sent to Saturday PUNCH
on Friday, said, “They (ad hoc staff) have yet to be paid for the
election duty. Now, they will have to be re-trained; a sort of refresher
programme for the re-scheduled election.
“INEC cannot afford to put over 18,000
persons in hotels. The NYSC members were only paid training allowances.
The commission’s staff members are resident in the state, except for a
few that came from Abuja.
“While it is true that the commission
will bear some costs as a result of the re-scheduling, it will not be in
the form of keeping anybody in hotels for two weeks. Some staff
members, who came to Edo from the headquarters, will return to Abuja,
while all those residents in Edo State will also return to their homes.”
In a related development, stakeholders in the botched election in Edo State have also started counting their losses.
It was learnt that while the major
political parties would incur additional expenses on campaigns, many of
the observers left the state early on Friday in order to reduce the cost
of staying behind.
An observer and the Convener of the
Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, Mr. Clement Nwankwo, said, “Some
are staying and some are leaving. Of course, a lot of people will not
stay for another two weeks. Quite a lot of observers are leaving; we
have a few people who are continuing to observe the situation. Some of
them are based in Edo State, so they will be keeping an eye on what is
going on.
“As you know, the election has to be
observed. It becomes even more important now to observe it because we do
not know why it was postponed. We rejected the reason given for the
postponement.”
The candidate of the All Progressives
Congress, Godwin Obaseki, told one of our correspondents that the impact
of the shift on his campaign could not be quantified.
Obaseki explained that the timing and
mode of communication adopted by the security agencies could have been
better handled, having regards to the hard work and huge resources
deployed towards the election by all concerned.
“But clearly, it has not helped me at
all because we have used resources. Our followers are very disappointed;
that is where we find ourselves, so we just have to prepare for
September 28,” he said.
He, however, noted that given the nature of the advice, the exercise was not worth a drop of anybody’s blood.
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