Owing to the fact that a number of Nigerians did not come out to exercise their voting rights on Saturday, February 25, for the just concluded presidential and national assembly elections, over 200 million ballots papers that cumulates to billions of naira have allegedly gone to waste.
Samson Itodo, the executive director of Yiaga Africa, made the disclosure while featuring on Channels Television’s The 2023 Verdict on Wednesday.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said the number of registered voters was 93,469,008, but the total of collected permanent voter cards (PVCs) was 87.2 million, with 176,606 polling units.
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However, at the concluded elections across the country, INEC said only 25,286,616 voters were accredited.
Itodo said if 72 million ballot papers were given out to accredited voters for the just-ended election, it means about 200 million sheets of paper have gone to waste which transmits to billions of naira wasted.
He said “If 72 million ballot papers were issued to these accredited voters. We have about 200 million sheets of paper that have gone to waste. And if you check how much was expended per voter in this election, it was somewhere around six to eight dollars per voter.
“If you multiply that you discover that we have wasted billions of naira because people didn’t show up to cast their votes. And so that is money that could have been used to provide drugs to our primary healthcare centres.”
