TheCable

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the timetable for the governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states, which will hold later in 2019, will be released during the week.

Mahmood Yakubu, the commission’s chairman, disclosed this on Monday when he appeared before a joint committee of the national assembly on INEC for the budget defence session.

“This year, we are going to conduct two end-of-tenure elections into the offices of the governors in Kogi and Bayelsa states,” Yakubu said.

“Let me seize this opportunity here to say before the end of this week, INEC will issue a timetable and schedule of activities for the governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states.”

The INEC chairman further said a total of N45.5 billion was released as the commission’s regular budget in 2019.

He said while over N21 billion is for personnel cost, the overhead cost and capital expenditure are N4.2 billion and N1.6 billion respectively.

According to him, “in 2019, the commission is proposing the sum of N21.8 billion to cover consolidated salaries for 16,455 career employees of INEC and 51 political office holders, making a total of 16,506 employees of the commission in 2019.

“The personnel cost is broken into two subheads: You have the consolidated salary of N17.5billion and you have the social contribution, National Health Insurance, contributory pension, and employee compensation of N4.3billion.

“The commission is proposing the sum of N17.7 billion under the electoral expenditure to cover such activities as monitoring party primaries, conventions, voter education, stakeholder meeting legal expenses and others.”

He said this is the same as what the commission got in 2018 and “only slightly better than the envelopes of several years before them.”

“In 2017, it was N45billion; in 2016, it was N45billion, and in 2018, it was increased marginally to N45.5billion and the same envelope was presented to the commission in 2018 and 2019,” he said.

“I will say for the 2018 financial year we were fully funded. We were on the first line charge, so in terms of the releases from the executive to the commission, we were fully funded.”

Yakubu said INEC’s budget in 2019 is the same as what it got in 2018 and “only slightly better than the envelopes of several years before them.”

“In 2017, it was N45billion; in 2016, it was N45billion, and in 2018, it was increased marginally to N45.5billion and the same envelope was presented to the commission in 2018 and 2019,” he said.

“I will say for the 2018 financial year we were fully funded. We were on the first line charge, so in terms of the releases from the executive to the Commission, we were fully funded.”