INEC accuses APC and PDP of failing to submit audit reports
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic (PDP) that wants to reclaim power from it have violated the N1 billion spending limit in the Electoral Act and have not submitted their audit reports on the 2019 election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said some other parties have also not submitted their audit reports, and said forms have been prepared to make it easier to track expenditures.
Auditors of registered political parties have been trained for the exercise, according to INEC Elections and Party Monitoring Director Aminu Idris.
He disclosed this at the workshop INEC organised in Lagos for its Press Corps on the Electoral Act 2022 and INEC Processes, Innovations, Preparations for the 2023 General Election.
Idris said only 34 of the 91 registered parties that participated in the 2019 election have submitted their audit reports but just nine met the full requirements of submitting audit reports accompanied by an affidavit.
“In the 2019 general election, we tracked election expenses and we have a report of that. In 2023, we will go through this process,” Idris said.
“The Commission tracks expenditure for general elections. In the last report we did, we had some figures from the presidential election of the two major parties.”
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Campaign spending limits
“We remember that then, the maximum limit was N1 billion and what we had based on our tracking across the country was N4.6 billion and N3.3 billion.
“What we tracked were about four items namely, billboards, print media advertisements, electronic media advertisements and coverage/programmes,” Idris added, per The PUNCH.
“In the 2019 election, based on requirements for auditing reporting, 91 political parties participated and about 34 submitted reports of expenditure.
“But even among the 34, there were issues of compliance with the reports. Out of the 34, only nine fully complied with submitting a report with an affidavit.
“The Commission is already auditing the accounts of political parties over the last five years; 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
“In the list of the 34 political parties that submitted audit reports for the 2019 election, the major parties were not among.”