State governors have asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to sell over 78,000 excess laptops and webcams to them for distribution to secondary schools and promotion of computer literacy in the states.
The governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole disclosed this to state house correspondents after the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting presided over by Vice-President Namadi Sambo on Thursday.
According to the governor, the meeting agreed that state governments are going to buy the machines and INEC should sell the computers to them at a discount of 25 percent for the old machines and 10 percent for the new ones.
Ahead of the 2011 general elections, the electoral body reportedly spent N18 billion for the ICT-Voter Registration System which led to the purchase of these laptops and webcams as part of the Direct Data Capture (DDC) machines.
INEC recently announced that it would not be conducting a fresh voters exercise ahead of the 2015 general elections, hence its decision to sell-off 78,000 units of the laptop components of the DDC machines.
The chief press secretary of INEC had in a statement last week announced the laptops would be sold to the public.
The NEC meeting also took a presentation from the Director-General of the Debt Management Office (DMO), Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, who highlighted the gains recorded by the DMO on public debt management and the successful completion of Debt Data Reconstruction (DDR) exercise in all the 36 states and the FCT in December, 2012.
