Festus Okoye, commissioner for information and voter education of the Independent National Electoral Commission , says the commission is still in talks with the Central Bank of Nigeria over storage of election materials.sensitive election materials would no longer be “routed” through the CBN.
However, speaking on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme, Okoye said logistics measures taken in Ekiti and Osun governorship elections will not be sustainable for the general election.He said the commission employed the services of the Nigerian Air force for the logistics of the electoral materials, adding that because of the huge amount of the ballot papers and other sensitive materials, the commission will have a “sit-down” with the CBN to draw out plans for the 2023 elections.
“This is because for instance, in the Ekiti governorship election, we had less than a million registered voters. In the Osun governorship election, we were shy of two million registered voters.“These are stand alone elections. For the Ekiti election, we utilised the service of the Nigerian Air force and they flew the materials into Akure airport. We did the same thing with the Osun election, and we moved the materials to our state offices.
“It’s going to be a huge logistics nightmare. What we intend to do going forward since there are issues with keeping our materials with CBN, we have not had enough opportunity to sit down with the Central Bank to review the entire issue surrounding our moving our material with the Nigerian Air force.