The House of Representatives clarified on Wednesday that it approved N242.2bn as total virement for the funding of the 2019 general elections as requested by President Muhammadu Buhari and did not increase it.

The House said the virement covered the election budget for the Independent National Electoral Commission and all security agencies as well as the Office of the National Security Adviser.

However, it explained that the total budgetary allocation for INEC and all the agencies in 2018 was N831.2bn when the N242.2bn was added to the initial funds appropriated to them in the 2018 budget passed by the National Assembly.

The Speaker, Mr Yakubu Dogara, who spoke on the issue on Wednesday, noted that some media organisations (not The PUNCH) had created the impression that the House jacked up the virement or passed a different figure from what the Senate approved.

“Each agency already had a budget for 2018 operations. There was also the virement approved.

“What we did yesterday (Tuesday) was just to total the 2018 budget provision and the virement. There was no addition of any sort. We passed the President’s request”, he added.

INEC and the affected agencies already had a total provision of N589bn in the 2018 budget for their regular operations.

The breakdown showed that INEC had N45bn as its 2018 budget and received a virement of N189bn, bringing the commission’s total to N234.5bn.

The NSA’s office had N37.4bn in the 2018 budget and got additional N9.4bn, bringing its total to N46.9bn.

The Department of State Services received a budgetary allocation of N40.5bn in 2018 and got additional virement of N10.2bn, bringing the agency’s total to N50.7bn.

Similarly, the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, which had N79.2bn in 2018, received additional N3.5bn, bringing its total to N82.8bn.

The Police, which had N324.2bn in the 2018 budget, got N27.3bn as virement, leaving its total at N351.5bn.

The Nigerian Immigration Service also got a virement of N2.6bn. Its 2018 budget was N61.9bn, bringing the agency’s total to N64.6bn.

The overall budget appropriated for the affected agencies in 2018 tallied at N831.2bn.

There was apparent confusion on Tuesday when the N831.2bn appeared on the motion paper of the House when the approval was done.

The Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, Mr Mustapha Bala-Dawaki, who moved the motion for the consideration of the virement, did not attach the detailed breakdown of the distribution of the figures immediately, a development that led to the confusion. – Punch

– Oct. 18, 2018 @ 9:47 GMT |