LINUS CHIBUIKE
THE Independent National Electoral Commission has over 1,700 cases in various courts across Nigeria, filed against it after the 2019 general elections.
The Chairman of the Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, said INEC’s legal department had about 860 pre-election cases it was attending to, including 807 post-election cases.
Yakubu disclosed this while defending the Commission’s 2021 budget before the Senate Committee on INEC, saying the cases were many and rising because each time any candidate or party went to court, INEC was usually joined in the suit.
“We are almost getting close to 1,700 pre-election and post-election cases in 2019 alone, and every day you hear people going to court and joining INEC,” he noted.
The chairman said, owing to this, INEC had to hire lawyers to defend it, and that this made the Commission to spend between N3 million and N4.5 million on each pending case.
“We are not paying fantastic fee; we apply the Federal Ministry of Justice scale of fees. For instance, if you have a case for governorship election before the Supreme Court, it is a maximum of N4.5 million, while others could be as low as N3 million,” he said.
He, however, said the Commission would continue to do its best in line with available resources.
