INEC to spend N600m on Ekiti State July 14th governorship election

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said it will spend about N600m on the Ekiti State governorship election which will take place on July 14, 2018.

The INEC National Commissioner in charge of the Ekiti election, Prince Solomon Soyebi, said this during an interview with Saturday PUNCH “for the Ekiti election, the aggregate is much because when we talk about the commission spending on Ekiti, I can assure you that we are spending over N600m.”

Soyebi noted that about 280,000 Permanent Voter Cards had not been collected, adding that the collection of PVCs would stop on Sunday, July 9 (tomorrow). The INEC commissioner said it was likely that once the distribution of PVCs stopped; there would be no fresh registration until after the 2019 general elections.

He said, “Sunday is the deadline for the collection of PVCs. And for Ekiti, there is not likely to be any other Continuous Voter Registration exercise until after the 2019 elections. So, we have been telling people to go and collect their PVCs.”

On the insinuation that the election may be rigged, Ekiti REC said that the word rigging should be wiped off from the country’s electoral system. He said, “I don’t know what you want to rig again with the kind of structure we have put in place in INEC. That is what we have been explaining to the people of Ekiti State.”

The Commissioner of Police for Ekiti state, Bello Ahmed, said over 20,000 security personnel would be involved in the exercise.  The CP said the police would deploy 16,000 of its personnel while other security agencies would make up the remaining number.