The Commissioner for Information and Voter Education at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Festus Okoye, says the commission is discussing with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) the storage of election materials.
This statement comes weeks after INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu said sensitive election materials would no longer be “routed” through the CBN.
While speaking on “Sunrise Daily”, a Channels Television breakfast program, Okoye said logistics measures taken in Ekiti and Osun governorship elections would not be sustainable for the general election.
Okoye said: “You cannot use the Ekiti governorship election and Osun governorship election as a measure of what will happen in 2023.
“This is because, for instance, in the Ekiti governorship election, we had less than a million registered voters. In the Osun governorship election, we were shy of two million registered voters.
“These are stand-alone elections. For the Ekiti election, we utilized the service of the Nigerian Air Force and they flew the materials into Akure Airport. We did the same thing with the Osun election, and we moved the materials to our state offices.
“But for the 2023 general election, we are going to have over 95 million ballot papers printed for the presidential election. Over 95 million will be printed for the senatorial election; over 95 million papers will be printed for the House of Representatives election. Then, it goes down.
“It’s going to be a huge logistics nightmare. What we intend to do, going forward, since there are issues with keeping our materials with CBN, we have not had enough opportunity to sit down with the Central Bank to review the entire issue surrounding our moving our material with the Nigerian Air Force.
“We are going to do that. If at the end of the day, we are not satisfied with the arrangement, then we are going to look for a new logistics pathway how to manage logistics during the 2023 elections. But no decision has been made.”
