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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has explained why it fixes the Kogi West Senatorial District rerun election for same day with the governorship election, saying that they took the decision to save more than N290 million for the country.
National Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, who disclosed this, said the commission would also conduct rerun for Brass 1 State Constituency in Bayelsa State.
According to him, the commission fixed the senatorial election to go with the governorship poll, considering how convenient it would be and how economical, adding that what the commission would have needed to spend, the parties would have had more to spend.
The INEC boss said the commission would have had to spend to make recruitments afresh, as well as pay new costs on logistics if it would conduct the senatorial election separately, but with the new arrangement, many of such costs had been blended into the governorship arrangement.
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“As a stand-alone election, the senatorial district poll in seven local governments would have cost the nation well over N300million; we’ll have to get ad-hoc workers, make arrangement for transportation, accredit observers, political parties, then also the cost on the part of the parties and others.
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“But because we are combining the election with the governorship election, it’s going to cost the nation less than N10million, instead of over N300million. The commission decided to combine both elections to save cost and for convenience.
“We all know that on November 16 we have two major elections; the end of tenure governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states. But recall also that in March, after we conducted the house of assembly and governorship elections, we had issues of violence, leading to the declaration of the election as inconclusive. We planned to conclude the election two weeks later, but for protracted litigations over six polling units.
