2023: How Over 200 Million Ballot Papers Were Wasted – Sam Itodo

The Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo has come out to describe how Nigerians wasted over 200 million ballots papers at the just concluded presidential and National Assembly elections.

According to him, that amount of ballot papers was wasted because Nigerians did not come out to exercise their voting rights.

Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said the number of registered voters was 93,469,008, but the total of collected permanent voter cards (PVCs) was 87.2 million against 176,606 polling units.

But at the just-ended presidential and national assembly elections across the country on Saturday, INEC said 25,286,616 voters were accredited.

Naija News reports that Itodo while featuring on Channels Television’s The 2023 Verdict on Wednesday 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.

The Yiaga Africa boss noted that the wasted ballot papers transmit billions of naira wasted, which can be used for other sectors.

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.”