President Muhammadu Buhari (image courtesy Presidency)
The Presidency has blamed Senate President Bukola Saraki for the delay in the approval of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) budget for the 2019 elections.
The Executive was reacting to Saraki’s allegation that President Muhammadu Buhari was to blame for the delay.
Buhari submitted the INEC budget for 2019 elections in July to the National Assembly.
The federal lawmakers have yet to pass the budget, alleging that INEC had submitted the budget to the presidency since February.
“It is not true that INEC submitted their draft budget to the Presidency in February. No, it came much later but even then, this is not the real issue,” Buhari’s media aide Garba Shehu, in a statement on Sunday.
“The fact that their proposals came well after the President had laid his budget for the year 2018 before the National Assembly meant that their own will be sent as supplementary budget.
“This was clearly stated to them by the Minister of Budget and National Planning,” he also said.
Shehu explained that a supplementary budget could not be submitted until the main budget was passed, and so the delay in passing the main budget was the reason for the delay.
He said there was no way President Muhammadu Buhari could have submitted a supplementary budget while the main one was still pending, adding that “it is never done.”
“Because Saraki did not return the main budget, we could not have submitted the supplementary one,” he also said.