INEC: We Didn’t Receive Money from Devt Partners for 2023 Polls

 •Parties, candidates, CSOs pass confidence vote in Yakubu

Adedayo Akinwale and Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has clarified that it did not receive any direct funding or cash support from international development partners for the conduct of the 2023 general election. Chairman of INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at a meeting with civil society organisations (CSOs) on the review of the 2023 general election.

The clarification came as a national roundtable attended by CSOs, chairmen of five political parties, and their candidates at all levels in the last general election, passed a unanimous vote of confidence in the INEC chairman.

INEC said the explanation became necessary to correct the impression in some quarters that it received huge sums of money from development partners for the election.

Yakubu said at the poll review meeting with the CSOs that while the commission was able to commence preparation for the last general election on time because of the Electoral Act 2022, there were many challenges encountered before and during the elections.

While noting that the severe cash and fuel situations at the time were compounded by the perennial insecurity nationwide, he stressed that the overall effect on the deployment plans by the commission was worsened by the behaviour of some INEC officials in the field. He said these made logistics management particularly challenging.

The INEC chairman noted that the deployment of thugs by some political actors made election day administration difficult in a number of places. He expressed the commission’s appreciation to CSOs and development partners for their enormous support to INEC during the 2023 general election.

Meanwhile, the national roundtable at a World Press Conference condemned the calls for the removal of Yakubu.

A communiqué, which was read on behalf of the participants by National Chairman of Action Alliance (AA), Chief Ken Udeze, commended the introduction of technology in the accreditation and transmission of election results. Udeze called on the National Assembly to amend the Electoral Act 2022 to enable the deployment of technology in the result collation and announcement processes.

The roundtable frowned on what it called, “stereotyped attack on the INEC national chairman and rejected the calls for his sacking, which is an expression of ill-will and done in bad faith.”