National Assembly approves N242b elections’ budget

THE Senate and House of Representatives yesterday approved N242.245 billion for the conduct of the 2019 general elections.

The fund was approved by the two chambers for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and affected security agencies for the smooth conduct of the elections.

This followed the final approval of the INEC and security agencies budget for the conduct of the 2019 elections as requested by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The lawmaker, however, tinkered with the proposals made for the Police, Department of State Service (DSS) and office of the National Security Adviser (NSA).

The Police in the original proposal forwarded to the National Assembly by President Buhari requested for N30 billion. But the National Assembly approved N27.341 billion for it.

It also reduced the N12,213,282,455 billion proposed for the DSS to N10.213 billion.

It added N5 billion from the Police and DSS to N4,281,500,000 earmarked for the office of the National Security Adviser jerking it up to N9.481.

The N189 billion proposals for INEC, N2.628 billion for National Immigration Service (NIS) and N3.573 billion for the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, were retained and approved as requested by the President.

Approval of the N242.245 billion elections budget for 2019 by both chambers followed the recommendations of the Appropriation Committees of the two chambers.

The committee in its report presented in the Senate by its Chairman, Danjuma Goje, differed with the President on source of virement for the N242 billion.

The President, in his July letter, asked the two chambers to vire the money from the N578 billion special votes  they inserted into the N9.12 trillion 2018 budget through addition of about 1,403 projects.

The two chambers said the virement of the election budget should be made from Special Intervention Programme (both recurrent and capital).

The committees recommended and it was approved by both chambers that N194.7 billion out of the N242 billion would be vired  from N350 billion recurrent component of the Special Intervention Programme  and the balance of N47.498 billion would be vired  from N150 billion capital component of the Special Intervention Programme.

Breakdown of the N242 billion budget as proposed by Buhari in the virement letter of July said: INEC  (N189,207,544,893.00) ; Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), N4.281 billion;   Department of State Security (DSS), N12.213 billion;  Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps , N3,573,534,500.00; Police,  N30,541,317,432 and  Nigeria Immigration Service  N2,628,143,320.00.