Kaduna state governor, Malam Nasir El-rufai, has said that his administration has so far spent up to N4 billion in preparation for the conduct of Local Government election in the state.
El-rufai, who lamented the high cost of election said that his government was preparing to conduct the cleanest election in Nigeria’s history.
Speaking at the town hall meeting organised in Abuja by the All Progressives Congress (APC) Committee of True Federalism, the Kaduna state governor revealed that in the next few days the State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC) will take delivery of 300 units with which they will go round the state to demonstrate to the people how to vote using the electronic platform.
“We have appointed local government administrators three times since we came into office because we don’t want to conduct local government election, but because when we came in, we needed time to settle down and understand what is going on.
“We realized that you can’t just come in and conduct local government election the next day unless you plan to write the results as some have done. I didn’t think we should do that. People talk about elections without realizing that conducting elections has so many components.
“First, we needed to set up the state Independent Electoral Commission who will decide when to conduct election. Secondly, elections are very expensive. The type of local government elections we are planning to hold in Kaduna has so far cost us N4 billion and we have not yet conducted the election.
“This was build specifically for us and has to be compliant with the card reader. This machine will be used for the next ten years. But N4 billion in this day of physical cash crunch is not easy and there are few states that can spend such money. Even if you want to conduct the election the traditional way, it will still cost you that much because you will have to print ballot papers, but when you do electronic voting, you don’t need ballot papers.
“This process need time and when that process is going on, people think we should leave the PDP appointees. No, we removed them and put our people there. At first, we appointed them for six month because we thought that six months will be enough time for us to study the situation. But we were wrong and so, we had to appoint another set for another six months and again, we were not ready.”
