Independent National Electoral Commission says registered political parties in the country must disclose the sources of their campaign funds and keep to the rules guiding campaign financing and spending limits.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, stated this in an exclusive interview with Trust TV. The interview will air on the TV channel at 7 pm tomorrow (Monday).
Yakubu said there are also limits for what individuals can contribute to campaign financing, as they can only make contributions subject to certain limits.
The INEC Chairman said, “The party also has its own limitations as to what it can spend, including where the money is coming from and the responsibility for full disclosure for transparency. The limits are in the law actually.
“These are in the law and they must be obeyed and respected.”
Yakubu reiterated that political parties cannot receive financial contributions from foreign sources, adding that if any of the parties receive such funds from outside the country, it must be transferred to INEC.
Concerning the security of its online and electronics systems, the INEC chairman assured that the commission would invest heavily in cybersecurity.
He said, “Any organisation that operates an online platform is susceptible to hacking but our defence system is very robust.
“But I am sure you don’t expect me on national and international television to say exactly how we are going to defend our system, but we are satisfied that our defence system is robust.”
Yakubu, who also spoke on the invalid registrants in the recently concluded Continuous Voter Registrations, said that after every registration, INEC cleans up the data, adding that this helps the Commission to remove those who are not eligible to be registered under the law.
Yakubu added, “Nigerians are not allowed to register more than once, so those who are engaged in multiple registrations we removed their data, so that was what we did. But the law requires also that once we do so, we should also throw the register open to Nigerians for claims and objections by citizens.
“And the law specifically requires the commission to publish the hard copies of the register in all the 8,809 wards nationwide, as well as 774 local government areas. Now the idea is for citizens to help INEC to further clean-up of the register.
“So, there will be two stages, we are about to complete the cleaning up of new registrants, we will add the data of fresh registrants that are eligible or valid to the existing register of 84m and then publish the entire register nationwide for citizens to help us clean it up further.”
He further said that learning from past experiences, INEC approached the National Assembly to provide a timeline by which funds should be appropriated and as much as possible released to the commission before elections.
“So, we submitted a budget that every Nigerians knows N305bn for the election, which has been appropriated and substantial part of it released,” he said.
The INEC boss said that a substantial part of the non-sensitive materials has already been contracted and some have started delivery, thus the commission is not going through the kind of tension that it went through in previous elections.
“So, in terms of disbursement of funds, not all the funds have been released to the commission yet but even if all the funds are release today, some of the funds will not be needed until next year,” he added.
Yakubu assured that INECbis putting in place all necessary provisions on security to ensure that the security of electoral officials, election materials and the electorate is guaranteed in the conduct of the 2023 general elections.