INEC to sell off 78,000 laptops to public

On Wednesday in Abuja, the chief press secretary of INEC released a press statement in which he disclosed some pieces of information about the conduct of the 2011 general elections which has been the subject of much speculations and conjecture. He also disclosed some of the commission's plans for the future as regards the registration of voters and the issuance of permanent voters' cards.

Here are 7 things we learnt today from Mr. Idowu. (*Note that these are claims made by the INEC spokesman and The Scoop is yet to completely run a fact-check on them.)

1. The commission spent the sum of N122.9 billion ($800.6 million) to conduct the 2011 elections. The breakdown shows that N66.3 billion was spent for Recurrent Expenditure and N56.6 billion for Capital Expenditure. There had been rumours that the commission expended the sum of N566.2 billion. INEC claimed that those figures are false.

2. Since the total amount budgeted by for use by the electoral body was N131.4 billion, it means that INEC saved "the nation" about N9 billion.

3. INEC does not intend to conduct a fresh registration exercise towards the 2015 general elections. It would only issue permanent voters cards to voters. These permanent cards would be eligible for use for 10 years, after which only the National Identity Card will be required to vote during elections.

4. The Federal Executive Council recently approved the sum of N2.1 billion budget for INEC to produce 33.5 million Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs). That money is not to be used in conducting a new registration exercise, but for producing the cards which would replace the old-laminated Temporary Voter Cards that were issued during the registration exercise in 2011. In all, there were 73.5 million eligible voters who registered during that exercise conducted in January-February 2011. In 2012 (last year), the government approved N2.6 billion for production of the first batch of 40 million cards, so this latest approval is for the second phase of the same project.

5. The reason it's important that the temporary cards are replaced, according to Mr. Idowu, is that they are fragile, and are also susceptible to abuse by unscrupulous persons, "who were in the past reported to have illicitly massed up the cards and put them in the hands of cronies to use in manipulating elections." The permanent cards would be far much more fraud-proof, chip-based, with the chip on each card containing all the biometric data of a legitimate holder.

6. Since the commission would no longer be conducting a fresh voters exercise, it has decided to sell-off 78, 000 units of the laptop component of DDC machines. But the PVCs the commission will in due course issue to registered voters

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