Up to 200 million ballot papers may have been wasted in Nigeria’s 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections held on Saturday, February 25.

The wastage comes from the fact many people did not show up to cast their votes, according to Samson Itodo, executive director, Yiaga Africa, a foremost election observer.

Itodo, who made this observation on Channels Television’s The 2023 Verdict on Wednesday, also said about $6 to $8 was spent per voter in the election.

“If 72 million ballot papers were issued to these accredited voters, we have about 200 million sheets of papers that have gone to waste. And if you check how much was expended per voter in this election, it was somewhere around $6 to $8 per voter,” Itodo said.

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“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,” he said.

Channelstv.com reports that out of 93,469,008 registered, there was a total of 87.2 million collected permanent voter cards (PVCs) against 176,606 polling units, while 25,286,616 voters were accredited on election day.

After a keenly contested presidential election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the early hours of Wednesday declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), a former governor of Lagos State, winner of the election after he scored 8,794,726 votes against 6,984,520 votes polled Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a former vice president, and 6,101,533 votes scored by Labour Party’s Peter Obi.