Senate approves N189 billion for INEC

The Senate yesterday finally approved the election budget of N189 billion for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct the 2019 polls.

Senate, however, differed on the source of funding the elections, saying the money should be sourced from President Muhammadu Buhari’s security votes.

Buhari had in his letter to the National Assembly requested that the money be taken from the N500 billion constituency projects, which the lawmakers allegedly inserted into the 2018 budget.

However, the President had in July sent a letter to the National Assembly requesting that the 2019 INEC budget be approved in two tranches of N143 billion this year and N45 billion in 2019.

In the report, subtitled: Source of Fund, the committee recommended that the N189 billion requested for the 2019 general elections should be vired from recurrent and capital components of the Special Intervention Programme (SIP) captured in the Service Wide Votes of the 2018 Appropriation Act.