More than half of the funding for the 2027 general elections has been received, with over N500 billion, according to Mohammed Haruna, Commissioner for Information and Voter Education of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
In a Friday interview with Arise News, Haruna talked about election preparation and financing, and she said that it’s good that these funds have been distributed.
But he did bring up INEC’s worries about unpaid bills from past elections and the prompt availability of the rest of the cash they need to carry out their plans in full.
over than half of the allotted monies, about N500 billion or slightly over, have been received, he stated. More than half of the total is contained in this.
Of course, we still need to sort out a few things. Due to inadequate funding during the last general election, we have outstanding debts.
There is still more than $20 billion due to contractors, on top of the approximately $6 billion owed them from the statutory allocation of more than $140 billion for that year. I think the first 500 billion were distributed just this month, maybe a week or two ago.
Concerned about the delay in funding, Haruna stated that INEC has already started getting ready for the 2027 elections, which involves getting more BVAS devices and other necessary election supplies.
We are definitely worried. This is a worry that everyone has. At the end of the day, the money has to be there. Consequently, the fact that over half has been let free is excellent news.
Having said that, we have been hard at work preparing for this very moment. For instance, in order to finalise the importation of BVAS—an essential component of our ongoing election process—the Director of ICT and another person travelled to China.
“As I indicated before, we have been doing a lot of prep work for this,” Haruna stressed.