Senate suspends meeting on INEC’s N189b budget indefinitely, gives reasons
nigerianeye.com Aug 18, 2018 1:43 PM

The Joint Committee of the National Assembly on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has suspended deliberations on the N189 billion submitted to it by the Commission for the conduct of the 2019 elections, indefinitely.


The Committee Chairman, Suleiman Nazif, announced the decision at the end of the panel’s meeting on Friday.

While providing reasons for the suspension, he, however, assured that members of the committee would do the needful to ensure that the citizens emerged victorious at the end of the day.

He said, “Honourable minister, honourable chairman (of INEC) and presidential liaison, I want to thank you very much for your time.

“We have the prerogative as a committee to look into all the details having got all the clarifications we require. We will now sit as a committee at the end of the day on which one to use. We are not playing politics here.

‘‘This is not where we play politics. On this note, this meeting is adjourned sine die (indefinitely).

“The issue in contention is, we have a letter from Mr. President requesting supplementary budget and what we have is a budget of N143, 512, 529.00, that is what we have in the President’s letter.

“But at the same time, there is another N45bn. When you put the N143bn and the N45.6bn, it gives us the N189bn, there is no confusion in it.

“INEC did the right thing, the President sent his letter. It is the sources of funding that became a problem that is why we invited the Minister of Budget and National Planning so that he can clarify.”

189 billion for election....mmmmm