2019 elections set to be Nigeria’s most expensive

The 2019 general elections are set to be Nigeria’s most expensive polls in history, according to Daily Trust investigations of approved official expenditure of past elections.

President Muhammadu Buhari had proposed N242.45bn (equivalent to $672.35m at official exchange rate) to the National Assembly for next year’s general elections.

The money will be shared between the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and five other security agencies that police the elections.

The election budget is about $50m higher than what Nigeria spent during 2015 elections. What INEC is set to get this year is also more than half of what the commission got from 1999 to 2015 as electoral expenditure.

From 1999 to 2018, the INEC had received N450bn as an electoral expenditure from the federal government, according to official documents reviewed by Daily Trust.

– Daily Trust