Nigeria’s Senate approved an 87.7 billion-naira ($583 million) budget for the country’s electoral commission to register voters before the 2011 general election.
The budget was approved “in the hope that the electoral commission will conduct a credible election,” Senate President David Mark said today in the capital, Abuja. The money will be raised “by selling federal government bonds,” Mark said.
The Independent National Electoral Commission will use much of the money to purchase equipment such as computers for the registration of voters in 120,000 centers across the West African nation, the legislature said today in a document distributed to reporters.
Attahiru Jega, the chairman of the commission, also known as INEC, said on July 22 the body needed to compile a fresh voters’ list because the current one contains too many errors to organize an acceptable ballot.
Senators approved the expenditure with reservations so as not to be held up as “scapegoats” if the elections are a failure, Chief Whip Kanti Bello said after today’s vote. The House of Representatives will vote on the measure tomorrow.
Foreign and local observers said the last ballot in 2007 was marred by vote-rigging, underage voting and violence. The presidential election was won by Umaru Yar’Adua who died on May 5 after a prolonged illness. His successor, Goodluck Jonathan, has vowed to make next year’s vote credible.
Jonathan said on June 21 that it was too soon to announce whether he would be a candidate because it would damage his government’s effectiveness.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s top oil producer, has suffered periodic outbursts of religious and communal violence that have claimed more than 13,000 lives since 1999, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
Army officers have seized power six times since Nigeria’s independence from the U.K. in 1960, once sparking a civil war from 1967 to 1970.