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The postponement of the 2019 general elections by the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, got stakeholders scampering for their calculators to do a post-mortem and put together their losses. The consequences of the last minute shift would obviously be very dire in several respects. The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) said no less than $1.5 billion was lost owing to the disruption of activities across the 36 states. LCCI Director General, Muda Yusuf told The Guardian that several activities were disrupted as a result of the postponement, adding that a slowdown should be expected in the days ahead till the elections are conducted.
INEC itself has incurred serious losses, but as things stand, the Commission simply has to shrug off those losses until the elections are held. But not with the multitude of ad hoc staff that were contracted to administer the elections. They would now have to be de-mobilized in a sense or wait in place till the next announced Election Day. Either way, there are cost implications. Connected to that is the fact the postponement also means that extra human and financial resources would be required to safeguard election materials, which had already gone out based on the assumption that the polls would take place.
The most palpable fear of stakeholders in the aftermath of the postponement is the key question of security of sensitive materials that are already in the field, of their potential to compromise the sanctity of the vote. Another set of stakeholders, which have invested massively on the assumption that the polls would hold are the local organizations. Many had partnered with funders to set up election monitoring projects to protect the ballot. These groups have been forced to return to the drawing board to do some head scratching with respect to funding gaps, occasioned by the postponement. Conservative estimates put the cost of a mission of 30 to 35 observers at around N3,000,000. And some groups deployed up to 4,000 observers across the country.
The political parties would be hit the hardest, having mobilized their party agents, especially with respect to the payment of allowances. At a time where many see the elections as an opportunity to collect their share of the national cake from the politicians, the party agents are not likely to return what they already collected, and would expect to be mobilized afresh by the political parties. This presents a huge financial challenge for presidential contenders who put observers in all the 120,000 polling units.
Aviation also took a direct hit as the postponement was estimated to have cost airlines and agencies at least N1.8b ($5 million). Notwithstanding non-restriction in flight movements, the loss was on account of cancelled local and international flights, and very low passenger turnout for airlines, due to earlier restriction of land movement. The very busy Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, was virtually empty, as very few passengers turned up for their flights. Though airlines like Virgin Atlantic, Etihad and Emirates ran on schedule, very few passengers travelled with the carriers. It was learnt that most of the foreign carriers cancelled their flights for the day. Compared to the international wing, the outlook of business at the local wing of the Lagos airport was entirely different as all flights were grounded and all aviation-related service providers absent.
The President of the National Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies (NANTA), Bernard Bankole, said the loss for airlines, travel agencies and government agencies cannot be less than $5 million. Bankole observed that no fewer than 10 foreign airlines were cancelled as at 3pm Saturday, coupled with the entire shutdown of local operations due to the postponed elections. “At least $5 million has gone to waste because plans would have been made before and had to be canceled. Now the elections of this Saturday will hold next week, what assurance is there that the election will hold? It is a dilemma, which is not good for aviation business at all,” Bankole said.
Kingsley Ezenwa, Communication Manager of Dana Air, which cancelled 10 local flights said there is no quantifying the losses, citing that the cost of logistics and planning of reschedule passengers for future flights are also huge. Aviation consultants told Huhuonline.com that airlines would experience more decline in passenger traffic till mid-week because the postponement would affect government activities and other businesses as a whole, given that businesses operated skeletal activities as people had assumed that there would be no movement during the day.
