Rafiu Ibrahim, chairman of the
senate committee on banking, says the executive proposed the cuts made in the
budgets of ministries, department and agencies (MDAs).
The upper legislative chamber had
earlier approved that the funds for 2019 elections should be raised from
recurrent, capital and service wide votes of the 2018 budget.
But on Tuesday, the senate
revised its position.
It said the N242 billion
President Muhammadu Buhari requested will come from service wide votes and the
budgets of MDAs.
Power, education and health
ministries were among those affected.
In a statement on Friday, Ibrahim
said the insinuation that the senate unilaterally made cuts in the budgets is
untrue.
“The facts remain that on
Tuesday, October 16th, the senate approved a report that stipulated that the
supplementary funding for INEC and security agencies to conduct the 2019
election should be sourced from the service wide vote of the executive through
virement. This information is out everywhere,” the statement read.
“However, the executive came up
with a counter-proposal that asked that the election be funded through both the
service wide vote and the budgets of 30 MDAs —on a pro rata basis. This is why,
the chairman of the senate appropriations committee, senator Danjuma Goje, had
to come up with a motion to rescind, reconsider and revise the source of
funding contained in the original approval granted by the senate.
“So, if you take a close look at
the Senate’s Order paper of Wednesday, November 7, 2018, you will see that
N121,122,525,050, which represents half of the entire supplementary budget, was
sourced from 30 MDAs chosen by the executive, while the other N121,122,525,050
was taken from the service wide vote.
“As always, all senators remain
committed to ensuring that Nigeria has free, fair and credible general
elections next year, and they will continue to collaborate with the executive,
members of the public and all other stakeholders to ensure that this happens.”
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