INEC’s FRAUDULENT PRACTICE
By Jide Ayobolu <jideayobolu@yahoo.co.uk>
Aug 23, 2006
The Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) recently submitted a supplementary budget of N19.7
billion to the House of Representatives in order to meet its financial
obligations for the conduct of the 2007 general elections. Its
submission of the supplementary budget to the House Committee on Finance
arose from its delay in submitting to the budget office on time. The
submission of the budget came just as the special adviser to the
president on Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit, Professor
Adekunle Wahab, criticized INEC for inflating its vehicles budget by N34
million. He reminded the legislators that its original budget of
N70billion forwarded to the budget office for 2006 budget was slashed to
N52billion. Wahab gave details of the cost of vehicles as put by INEC as
follows: three Toyota Land cruiser jeeps N86 billion, four Land Rover
cars N74million, four Mazda buses N451million, three Mercedes Benz
trucks N53million and three speed boats N52million. According to Wahab,
the budget office went to Toyota accredited agents and gave its findings
to INEC, and said if they so wish, they should find out themselves,
INEC’s contractor was not an accredited agent, hence the government
would have lost a whooping N34billion in the process. Wahab further
explained that, “most people accused us of removing the butter from
their bread. When the butter is too much on the bread, it becomes
difficult to know whether you want to eat bread or butter”.
Similarly, the Chairman, House Committee on
Finance, Alhaji Umar Abubakar, queried why N3billion was set aside for
the purchase of ballot boxes in the supplementary budget, when the same
amount was approved for the same item in the 2006 budget. Also, Shira
who chairs the House Committee on Electoral Matters, sought to know what
had happened to the N1billion found in the bank account of INEC’s late
Director of Finance, alleged to be proceeds of corruption. But INEC was
unable to answer all the queries. Disturbed by the huge public funds
that would be wasted if funds were approved for INEC to buy all the
vehicles requested for, Wahab suggested that it should use the vehicles
government bought for the National Population Commission when it
conducts national census early this year.
The point therefore is, if INEC is this
corrupt and cannot be trusted to do what is right with public funds, how
can it be trusted to do what is right and proper with the forthcoming
general elections in 2007? This is more so that the electoral body has
failed very woefully in the discharge of its duties and responsibilities
as it concerns the 1999 and 2003 elections. The bottom line is that we
don’t have credible people in INEC to ensure a free and fair election.
To compound the problems in the electoral body, the are no transparent
processes, no formidable structures and mechanisms, no workable
institutional frameworks in INEC. As the body is today, it exists at the
behest of the president, who makes all the key and strategic
appointments as well as approve its funding, all of these are
abnormalities in a democratic setting. These issues are so very
important because periodic elections are the center-piece of
representative democracy.
But since the time between now and the next
election is so short that any fundamental restructuring cannot be
carried out, it is very germane therefore that, all hands must be on
deck to carefully monitor the activities of INEC by all stakeholders.
Questions must be asked regularly, and INEC must be constantly kept on
its toes, so as to live up to expectation in the conduct of a credible
election that is acceptable to all and sundry, however, in the mean
time, the appropriate authorities must ensure that all those that have
in one way or the other misappropriated public funds must be duly
brought to book, to send a warning signal to others who might have such
dubious intent at heart.
BYJide Ayobolu
No 19 Gongola Street
Garki 2, Abuja
Nigeria
