Shocker as 2019 election court cases hit 1,700

Fred Itua and Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), yesterday, said the number of court cases that arose from the 2019 general election had risen to 1,700.

The Commission said it spent between N3million to N4.5 million on each of the court cases. 

Chairman of the commission, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu informed the Senate that “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 1,700 pre-election and post-election cases in 2019 alone,” he said. 

Yakubu said INEC had concluded  preparations to conduct elections in which Nigerians in diaspora could vote.

“The Commission is desirous of giving Nigerians living abroad the right to vote. After all, all our neighbouring 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, we can roll it out; we are ready. We have had several meetings with Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) but we can’t go beyond what the law provides,” he said.

On complaints by some groups of beings disenfranchised during elections, Yakubu advocated that the law be amended to correct the situation. 

“It is 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,” he said.

He suggested an amendments to the electoral act to enable early voting, so that those involved in election duty can vote early, or a major reform of electoral legal framework to allow people to vote wherever they are.

Yakubu  who made the disclosures while defending the agency’s  2021 budgetary allocations at the Senate, also announced the commencement of another phase of voters’ registration adding that the exercise would gulp not less than N1 billion.

He also briefed the Senate on the need for INEC’s  financial independence saying the Commission cannot be independent unless it is financially independent.

“What has happened now is our budget for 2020 dropped to N40 billion  from N45.5billion in 2019.  And as a result of the 10 per cent  COVID-19 cut, it further dropped to N36 billion in the middle of the year when we had already made preparation for expenditure.”

He said the commission had to take from a special fund established for the rainy days  to balance its budget for the  year.

Also at the  House of Representatives, the  Committee  on INEC disagreed with its chairman,  Aisha Dukku,  over the defence of the electoral body’s 2021 budget proposal.

Dukku, after opening formalities at the budget defence session,  had invited INEC chairman, Mahmoud Yakubu, to give an overview of its budget performance for 2020 and present the 2021 budget proposal.

However,  before Yakubu would begin his presentation,  a member of the committee, Solomon Bob  interjected,  saying that lawmakers just received copies of the documents they were expected to scrunitise.

Bob who stated that there was a lot of discontent among members of the committee, said he does not understand the propriety of conducting 2021 budget defence  when there was no oversight to review the 2020 budget performance of INEC.