A former Head of State, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), on Thursday said that no amount was too big for the Independent National Electoral Commission to conduct free and fair elections in the country.
Buhari, at a book presentation in Abuja, said Nigerians must know that elections must hold in 2011 and that INEC must not be allowed to have any excuse not to conduct an acceptable poll.
His reaction followed the views of some people that the N74bn demanded by the commission for voters registration was too high.
Jega had last week told the Senate Committee on Electoral Matters that INEC needed the amount to import 120,000 Direct Data Capturing machines for a new voter register.
He had warned that failure to release the said sum to the commission before August 11 might jeopardise the 2011 elections.
The INEC chairman had said, “To deploy the DDC machines in every polling unit, in a period of two weeks, we will need between N55.1bn and N74bn.”
A DDC machine is made up of a laptop computer, a fingerprint scanner, a high resolution camera, a back-up power pack and an integrated printer that produces high quality voter cards.
Jega described the process for purchasing the machines as complex and urged the government to waive the due process requirements for the commission in order for it to make a quick purchase.
According to him, he had told President Goodluck Jonathan; the Minister of Finance, Mr. Olusegun Aganga; and other stakeholders at several meetings that if the money was not made available within a reasonable time, INEC could not perform “any magic.”
Among those that believe that the amount is high is the Deputy President of the Senate, Chief Ike Ekweremadu, who said that it (N74bn) would be difficult to justify considering the level of poverty in the country.
Members of the National Assembly, who began a two-month recess last Thursday, have, however been recalled to consider, the N74bn budget the production of a new voter registration.
They are expected to resume legislative business on Tuesday, when a request for the approval of the sum is expected to reach them.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information and Media, Ayogu Eze, who confirmed this, said the lawmakers were keeping with their resolve to provide the necessary legislative support to INEC ahead of the 2011 elections.
He was, however, not sure if the National Assembly would approve the entire N74bn figure.
But Buhari, who spoke with journalists after the public presentation of the book titled “Praxis of Political Concepts and Cliches in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic,” said, “If INEC needs N100bn to conduct a free and fair election and Nigeria can afford it, so be it.
“We must know that election must hold next year. There is no doubt about that. We need to have election next year.”
The book launch was also attended by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and other prominent Nigerians.