The Federal Government is proposing about N65.28bn as budgetary allocation for the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, the National Assembly and the Presidential Amnesty Programme. This is in an attempt to reduce the cost of governance in the 2016 fiscal year.
The details of the reduction was captured in the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, and Fiscal Strategy Paper for 2016-2018 and would be unveiled on Tuesday when President Muhammadu Buhari presents the 2016 budget before the National Assembly, the Punch reports.
It noted that in the MTEF, the Federal Government is proposing a reduction of N17bn in the budgetary allocation to INEC from N62bn approved in the 2015 fiscal year to N45bn.
From September this year, the Federal Government only released N31bn out of INEC’s 2015 budgetary allocation of N62bn to the commission, the newspaper revealed.
The report said the Federal Government is proposing a cut of N5bn or 4.2 per cent from N120bn in 2015 to N115bn in 2016 for the National Assembly.
It was also learnt that as at the end of September, the Federal Government out of the approved N120bn for this year, had released the sum of N74.66bn to the lawmakers.
On the Presidential Amnesty Programme, the Federal Government is proposing a reduction of N43.28bn or 68.39 per cent in budgetary allocation for the programme from the 2015 amount of N63.28bn to N20bn.
Out of the 2015 approved allocation of N63.28bn, the total amount released from the Federal Government for implementation of the programme as of September 30 was N47.39bn.
The Federal Government was also reported to have reduced other agencies’ 2016 budgetary allocation.These agencies include: the National Judicial Council from N73bn in 2015 to N70bn; Public Complaints Commission from N4bn to N2bn and the Human Rights Commission from N1.52bn to N1.2bn.
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