INEC releases timetable for Bayelsa, Kogi gov polls this week

* Proposes N45.5bn annual budget

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Monday
said it will release, before the end of this week, the timetable
and schedule of activities for the end of tenure governorship
elections in Bayelsa and Kogi States billed to hold at separate
dates later this year.

Its chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, made the disclosure when
he led other members of the Commission to defend the Commission’s
2019 budget proposal before a joint session of the Senate Committee
on INEC and House Committee on Electoral matters.

Yakubu, while breaking down the Commission’s 2019 budget
proposal of N45.4 billion, explained: “This year we are going to
conduct two end of tenure elections into the offices of the
governors in Kogi and Bayelsa States.

“This year towards the end of the year we are going to conduct
governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsea.”

He added: “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”.

On the 2019 INEC budget, he observed that the Commission was
receiving same envelop amount as 2017 and 2018.

He said: “For 2019, we were presented with an envelope of N45.5
billion as our regular budget. This is the same envelope as in 2018
only slightly better than the envelopes of several years before
them.

“In 2017, it was 45 billion in 2016 it was 45 billion naira and
in 2018 it was increased marginally to 45.5 billion and the same
envelope was presented to the Commission in 2018 and 2019.”

He noted that in terms of performance of the Commissions budget
in the previous year, INEC was fully funded.

“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,” the INEC boss
said.

The INEC chairman further gave a breakdown of the proposed 45.5
billion naira, which he explained were in four components.

He said: “The first one is personnel cost and in 2019 the
commission is proposing the sum of 21.8 billion naira 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 17.5 billion and you have the social
contribution, National Health Insurance, contributory pension, and
employee compensation of 4.3 billion naira.”

The second component, according to Yakubu, is the overhead cost
put at N4.2 billion while the third budget head is for electoral
expenditure.

“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 explained.

He said the fourth and final budget head for which N1.6billion
was earmarked was for capital expenditure.

The chairman Senate Committee on INEC, Senator Suleiman Nazif,
commended INEC for a job well done in the just concluded 2019
general elections even as he noted that there were concerns that
should be addressed going forward.