Chief Electoral Officer Calls for Submission of Candidates’ Election Campaign Expenses for West Kwara’ae By-Election 2023
West Kwara’ae By-Election.
Disclosure of national election campaign-related expenses is one of the requirements of the Electoral Act.
The Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Jasper Highwood Anisi said that section 69 of the Electoral Act 2018 requires all candidates contesting in any national parliamentary elections must submit their election campaign-related expenses within 90 days as required by the law.
The 90 days period begins from the date the official election result for the particular parliamentary election is published in the gazette.
The West Kwara’ae by-election official result was gazetted on Friday 2nd June 2023.
“90th days counting from Friday 2nd June 2023 is Wednesday 30th August 2023. All candidates contesting this by-election must within this 90-day period, submit all accounts of election campaign expenses and the sources of all funds, including the amount received from each source used to meet those expenses”, Mr Anisi said.
“Section 108(3) of the Electoral Act 2018, also requires that any petition must be filed within a 30 days period from the date of the publication of the result, which was on 2nd June 2023”.
Mr. Anisi highlighted that failure to comply with these requirements by law, results in heavy penalties.
Failure to submit these electoral expense accounts by 30th August 2023 is a non-compliance to the Electoral Act, an election offense carrying a Maximum penalty of $20,000 fine units or 2 years imprisonment, or both.
An additional fine of $100 unit is charged for non-compliance each day a candidate fails to submit his/her campaign expenses after this given 90 days period.
To avoid paying accumulation of this $100 unit each day you fail to submit, candidates are encouraged to must submit within this 90-day given period
These election campaign expense accounts must be submitted on a special prescribed approved form that can be collected from the Electoral Commission office either in hard or soft copy or can also be downloaded online from Electoral Commission Official Website, www.siec.gov.sb .
There are two forms that will be used to submit these expenses. The first one is for the submission of all the expenses and the second one is the declaration form to certify the integrity of your report. This declaration must be signed by the candidate and attached to the expense report.
If you want to know more on how to go about submitting these candidates’ election campaign expenses, do call George Mali on Phone 7655660 to get a copy of the forms.
ENDS//
– SIEO Press