FG slashes NASS, INEC, amnesty budgets by N65bn in 2016



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.