There’s N300b vote in 2018 budget for election funding, says Dogara

FUNDING for the 2019 general elections is assured, House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara has said.

According to Dogara, there is already provision to take care of such contingencies that might arise in the Service Wide Votes.

Speaking with reporters at the National Assembly yesterday, Dogara said there is about N300 billion service wide vote provided in the 2018 budget.

This can be used to service election funding, he said.

The House of Representatives, he said, considers issues affecting Nigerians as top priority, adding that pending matters, Electoral Act inclusive, would be given accelerated attention.

His words: “You see, we are servants of the people by our calling as representatives of Nigerians and we don’t have the right to put our interests forward before the interests of the people.

“We are here to serve public good. These issues are outstanding and it was never going to be threatened in any way as was widely perceived, because we have a provision in the budget for service-wide votes, about N300 billion and whatever was the emergency would have been met from that service-wide fund that we have allocated in the budget.

“As we are back, we have set ourselves to accomplish what is there in the interest of the people. Even if it means in a day or two, we will accomplish that, even if it means handling it as we did for the ease of doing business bills. There were times that within a week we went through the first, second and third reading and passed it into law just because we saw the need for us to expand the economic space and improve citizens’ participation and wealth creation and the expansion of our economy, especially during these days of economic recession.

“So, nothing is impossible and I can assure you that as soon as we get the reports submitted from the various committees, hopefully within the week, we should be able to deal with them.”