Senate Slashes INEC Funds, Approves N234 Billion For 2019 Election

The Senate, on Thursday, approved 234.51 Billion Naira for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

This is against the 242.454 billion Naira request by President Muhammadu Buhari for the conduct of next year’s election. The Senate approved the sum with a reduction of N7.9 Billion.

The Senate also approved that the total sum of N189 billion, which will be for the funding of the 2019 elections, be moved from both recurrent and capital components of the special intervention programme.

President Buhari had requested the Senate’s approval of N242.45 (242,445,322,600) billion for INEC, to enable the electoral body to commence preparations for 2019 general elections.

The request was contained in a letter addressed to President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki and dated July 11.

Buhari, in another letter dated September 19 and titled ‘Request for virement/supplementary budget,’ referred to the 2019 election budget he had earlier transmitted to the Senate in July.

The letter was read by the Senate President at plenary on Wednesday.

The Budget had suffered setbacks, owing to the different shifts in the resumption of Senate plenary.

The upper legislative chambers had suspended plenary on July 24 and were scheduled to resume on September 25 but the Clerk to the National Assembly in a letter announced the postponement of resumption to October 9.