A scandal is now brewing at INEC office as it has been discovered that the commission squandered over N11bn on e-voting materials that were never deployed during the just concluded state and national elections.

It would be recalled that few weeks before the elections, Prof. Maurice Iwu, the Chairman of the commission, announced the award of some contracts that were expected to complement the successful deployment of electronic system purportedly adopted by INEC.

Some of the contracts include: the printing of permanent voters' cards. The contract was awarded to Chams Nigeria Limited of Louis Solomon Crescent, Lagos. The contract, worth N4 billion, was awarded on November 9, last year.

Chams is a reputable printer of ID cards. However, INEC officials claimed that their preferred bidder, the international firm of Messrs De LaRue, "did not accept the contract on the terms offered by the commission".

Even though Chams claimed to have printed and delivered the 60 million voter’s cards, voters, all over the country, did not receive the permanent voter’s cards, and they only used the temporary cards issued during the registration exercise for all the elections.

An even more questionable deal by INEC was the award of a N4 billion Global Leased Network Project contract to Reliance Communications Limited. (Reltel Wireless) at Moshood Abiola Way, Iganmu, Lagos.
The contract was meant for the electronic transmission of results during the elections from various counting centres to the central collation points.

Analysts were taken aback on how a company which has telecommunications network only in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Enugu won such a big deal. Reltel has no capacity to transmit election results from all 774 local government areas of the country and the area councils of the Federal Capital Territory.
Interestingly, three of the country's biggest telecommunications firms, MTN, Celtel and Mtel, as well as smaller ones such as Starcoms and Intercellular, all asked for the contract but were rejected by INEC in favour of Reltel.

However, there were no electronic transmissions of election result during the elections as observed by both local and international observers. All the results were collated manually.

INEC also awarded contract for the supply and installation of VSAT equipment in the sum of N410,000,000.00 and Satellite Networks (IMMARSAT M4) in the sum of N150,000,000.00. The equipment was to serve as backbone for the collation and transmission of result in areas where there are no telecommunications networks, particularly in the villages.

Also awarded was the contract for the supply of collation machines for the sum of N2,470,000,000.00. The machine was to be used for electronic collation of voting results.
However, none of the technical infrastructure were seen on the ground.

The Sun