Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) wednesday said that it has registered five political associations as political partiesâ€
The commission’s statement issued after its management meeting in Kaduna listed the newly registered parties to include, Young Progressive Party (YPP), Advanced Peoples Democratic Alliance (APDA), New Generation Party of Nigeria (NGP), All Democratic Peoples Movement (ADPM) and Action Democratic Party (ADP).
The statement read out to journalists by the National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Prince Adedeji Soyebi said that at present, 95 associations have applied to the Commission for registration as political parties.
Soyebi however said that out of the 95 associations, two have voluntarily withdrawn their applications.
With the registration of the above parties, there are now 45 political parties in Nigeria.
The INEC’s added: “The Commission today approved the applications of five of the associations which have fulfilled the constitutional requirements for registration,â€.
INEC also said that that it decided not to deploy the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) at the polling unit level because of insufficient budgetary provisionâ€
The commission said that the total budgetary provision for CVR in the 2017 budget which includes rerun and tenure elections, bye-elections and general elections is just N1.2bn which is barely enough to pay for the cost of personnel on CVR duty for one day.
The INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, stated this yesterday during a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) and other senior staff of the commission over the ongoing continuous voters registration process.
Yakubu noted that while N1.2bn would have been required every day to pay allowances of adhoc staff, the total budgetary provision for CVR in 2017 budget which includes rerun and tenure elections, bye-elections and general elections is N1.2bn this year.
He added that INEC decided to deploy the CVR exercise at the local government level because it is the only affordable option that can be accommodated within its current budgetary allocation.
“The total budgetary provision for CVR in 2017 budget including all the rerun and tenure elections, bye-elections and general elections is N1.2b this year. So all the money available in the budget is barely enough to pay for the cost of personnel for one day, assuming we deployed at PUs level, and that does not include security,†he said
According to Yakubu,there are 8,809 Registration Areas (RA) across the nation.
He also said that the procurement of the Direct Data Capture (DDC) machines needed for the deployment at Polling Unit level is N129 billion, just as he revealed that the total cost for deployment for take- off at polling units level is N137.4bn.
“We will require 46,247 staff, 17,000 security personnel. If we are to pay the ad hoc staff N2,000 per day it will cost the Commission 92.4m every day for exercise,†he added.
