The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said non availability of the new naira notes may affect the conduct of the general elections which is just 10 days away.
INEC FCT Resident Electoral Commissioner, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, said the ability of the Commission to conduct the general election may be hampered by the CBN’s cashless policy.
Bello was speaking in Abuja at a North-Central stakeholders’ roundtable on the 2023 general elections, organised by the Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA),on Tuesday.
He said the commission needs cash to enable it to coordinate security and logistics, and that the scarcity of the naira may affect this.
The REC said that if nothing was done to address the cash crunch caused by the policies, INEC in the FCT and across the country would find it difficult to deploy staff and materials for the election as most of the services required cash to obtain.
Although he said that apart from the cash challenge, the commission was prepared for the elections as it had taken delivery of 80 per cent of materials for the polls and trained staff ahead of the February 25 and March 11 elections.
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“Before election day, we are going to deploy the service providers. On the night of Friday (the day before the election) in the FCT, we have more than 12, 000 ad-hoc staff that we are going to give cash to.
“None of them will receive a cheque or accept a transfer. I am talking about FCT (12,000), which will require about N5,000 (each) cash on Friday night. Also, those who are going to transport our men, materials and security to the polling units will need cash to do that.
“Also, you will not take a security person to a polling unit from morning till evening without giving him money to eat and I don’t think you expect him to go to the POS to withdraw the N1,000 you are going to give him,” he said.
He, however, said that INEC was in discussions with the CBN to see how the problem could be addressed.
According to him, “This policy does not affect only INEC FCT in particular. It is going to affect the whole commission nationwide. So, the chairman of the commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu met with the CBN governor, they also consulted and briefed the National Council of States and the Presidency.
“This is an issue that is being tackled at the highest level because it affects the whole election generally. For now, we are going to wait for the outcome of the negotiations and discussions that are ongoing. So that we will know exactly what is going on.”
Speaking earlier, the Executive Director of the CTA, Faith Nwadishi, said the centre, which is an accredited election observation group, will deploy 2000 observers across the country to cover the 774 local government areas during the 2023 general elections.
Meanwhile, Emefiele has insisted that there was no need to shift the February 10 deadline for recognising the old naira notes as legal tender.
He stated this during a visit to the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday to discuss the monetary and currency redesign policy of the apex bank.
The comment by Emefiele is coming against the backdrop of the recent ruling by the Supreme Court, which temporarily restrained the CBN from enforcing the February 10 deadline for the naira swap.
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