{"id":79748,"date":"2025-12-07T13:18:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T13:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=79748"},"modified":"2025-12-07T13:18:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T13:18:27","slug":"serap-demands-inec-account-for-%e2%82%a655-9bn-spent-on-2019-election-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/12\/07\/serap-demands-inec-account-for-%e2%82%a655-9bn-spent-on-2019-election-materials\/","title":{"rendered":"SERAP Demands INEC Account for \u20a655.9bn Spent on 2019 Election Materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Adenike Lawal<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), has asked the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Joash Amupitan, to publicly account for an alleged \u20a655.9bn spent on smart card readers, ballot papers, result sheets and other materials for the 2019 general elections.<\/p>\n<p>Citing the latest Auditor-General\u2019s report released on September 9, 2025, SERAP said the audit uncovered multiple procurement violations.<\/p>\n<p>In a letter dated December 6 and signed by Deputy Director Kolawole Oluwadare, the organisation urged INEC to publish the names of all contractors involved and refer the matter to anti-corruption agencies.<\/p>\n<p>According to the audit, INEC paid \u20a65.3bn for smart card readers without evidence of supply and over \u20a64.5bn to six contractors for ballot papers and result sheets with no proof of delivery.<\/p>\n<p>The Auditor-General also dismissed INEC\u2019s national security justification for bypassing procurement rules.<\/p>\n<p>Other red flags include missing eligibility documents, irregular advance payments, failure to deduct \u20a62.1bn in stamp duties, unretired cash advances of \u20a6630.6m and more than \u20a641bn in contracts awarded without due process, some to firms outside the printing sector. One contract for four Toyota Land Cruisers was valued at \u20a6297m, despite 2019 market prices estimated below \u20a650m per vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>SERAP described the revelations as a grave breach of public trust, warning that credible elections are impossible without transparency.<\/p>\n<p>The group gave INEC seven days to respond or face legal action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adenike Lawal The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), has asked the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Joash Amupitan, to publicly account for an alleged \u20a655.9bn spent on smart card readers, ballot papers, result sheets and other materials for the 2019 general elections. Citing the latest Auditor-General\u2019s report released on September [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":79749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1755,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2027-general-elections","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79748"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79751,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79748\/revisions\/79751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}