The Federal Government budgeted N242.45 billion for the execution of the 2019 general elections to be conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
President Muhammadu Buhari made this known in a letter sent to the National Assembly for scrutiny and approval of the sum which will be drawn from the 2018 and 2019 budgets, shortly before they went on recess
Buhari urged the lawmakers to remove projects earlier inserted into the budget and replace them with priority projects as contained in the original bill. However, the passing of the budget bill has continually hit brick wall as a combination of time, suspicion and political intrigues has been its bane.
After days of postponement and dilly dallying, a joint House Committee was set up to consider the budget, but like everything that came from the executive, the House uncovered areas where items were duplicated. So far, no progress has been made to give the budget a clean bill of health.
Here, once again, is the breakdown of the 2019 election spending proposal:
Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC
2018 supplementary – N143, 512, 529, 445
2019 budget – N45, 695, 015,438
Total: N189, 207, 544, 893
Office of the National Security Adviser
2018 supplementary – N3, 855, 500, 000
2019 budget – N426, 000, 000
Total – N4, 281, 500,000
Department of State Security
2018 supplementary – N2, 903, 638, 000
2019 budget – N9,309,644,455
Total – N12, 213, 282, 455
Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps
2018 supplementary – N1, 845, 597, 000
2019 budget – N1, 727, 997, 500
Total – N3, 573, 534, 500
Nigeria Police
2018 supplementary – N11, 457, 417, 432
2019 budget – N19, 083, 900, 000
Total – N30, 541, 317, 432
Nigeria Immigration Service
2018 supplementary – N530, 110, 078
2019 budget – N2, 098,033, 142
Total – N2, 628, 143, 320
The Total amount for the election
2018 supplementary – N164, 104, 792, 065
2019 budget – N78, 314, 530, 535
Grant Total – N242, 445, 322, 600
A further breakdown of the 2018 virement proposal contains as follows: N310 million for the NSCDC to feed and administer drugs to dogs that will be deployed in states for the 2019 elections; N7 million for the police to feed 50 horses that would be used for patrol during the elections, which will take place between February 16 and March 2, 2019; N499.5 million for hiring of speedboats; N87.5 million by the police for the maintenance of aircraft and N407 million for maintenance of the vehicles to be used for election monitoring; and N126 million by the Nigerian Immigration Service for printing name tags for its personnel that would be involved in the elections while N166 million was requested for pre-election training, among other sundry items.
A majority of Nigerians have however, condemned the proposal as being ‘too much’.
