INEC is concerned about delays in disbursement of funds for the 2027 elections

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has expressed concern over the delay in disbursement of funds to the commission, even though the General Elections Law stipulates that funds for elections must be disbursed six months before the election.

INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Mohammed Haruna, expressed his concerns while speaking in a television interview on Thursday.

He said: “The worry is that we have to import a lot of the goods that we need, especially sensitive materials. Of course, the two most sensitive materials are the ballot papers and the election results sheets. And the time required to get them is very tight.

“We’ve never printed most of this stuff locally before. But the problem wasn’t a lack of capacity because our local printers could do it. The problem was the schedule because we weren’t getting the money on time; we couldn’t plan everything on time.

“So the timeline is, the local printer probably takes about six weeks to import newsprint. The sad thing is, almost all the inputs are imported. The newsprint is there, the ink, and so on. You publish a newspaper, you all know what they publish, everything, and it takes you two weeks to be able to distribute it because when the printer is finished, they send it to CBN for security reasons. This delivery is nationwide.

“So, with a schedule like this, everything is very tight, and we don’t have all the money because, of course, you need all the money to be able to plan well. Printers- of course no printer is going to take a chance and start printing for you.”

He also explained that candidates contesting the 2027 elections whose names are not included in the membership list submitted by their political parties to INEC 21 days before the primary elections, will not take part in the voting.

He linked the position of election referee to the Supreme Court decision which ratified the 2026 Election Law.

He said although the electoral commission received the Original Copy of the judgment on Tuesday, its team of legal experts, including five Senior Advocates of Nigeria, were ready to study and advise the commission on appropriate steps to take.

Haruna said: “Sometimes, you can’t just accept a judgment because your own interpretation may be wrong. So, we needed an expert opinion to do that. The judgment was delivered on September 24, and we didn’t get the Certified Original Copy until Tuesday.

”You have to be careful with these things because even if you look at a copy of the ruling and they tell you it’s CTC, the ruling may be fake. We have seen instances where people dared to falsify Supreme Court decisions.

“So, we have to be very careful, and it took us a lot of time to get it. Usually, within a week, you should be able to get a CTC of a judgment. After that, we held a commission meeting. But by that time, we had not gotten the advice from the legal experts.

“I think next week we should be able to give a statement. So hopefully next week we will definitely meet to be able to make a decision on this matter.”

When asked whether some errant party could change its candidate, Haruna said: “It’s too late to do anything.’

He added: ”The parties won’t even be able to take part. It’s like you committed an offense and you want to come and benefit. The law is very clear: once you do such a thing, you will not benefit. You can only benefit from it if you are able to replace a candidate.

“But depending on when we look at the legislation and make a decision, some parties may not even be able to field a candidate for governor.”