By Giwa SHILE
The Senate on Tuesday approved the security budget of N53.2 billion for the 2019 general elections.
The approval of the budget followed a presentation of the report of the National Assembly Joint Committee on Appropriation at plenary.
The Senate further approved that the money be vired from both the recurrent and capital components of the Special Intervention Programme captured in the Service Wide Vote of the 2018 Appropriation Act.
Presenting the report, the Chairman of the committee, Sen. Danjuma Goje, said that the committee members met and agreed to approve the budget of security agencies as part of the budget for the 2019 elections.
“The committee, having considered the report of its sub-committees on INEC Security and intelligence, interior and police affairs in respect of the provisions for INEC, NSA, DSS, NSCDC, NIS and NPF, approved request by President Muhammadu Buhari for passage,” Goje said.
The report showed the amount Buhari had requested for each of the agencies as follows: Office of National Security Adviser (NSA) (N4.3 billion) and Immigration (N2.6 billion).
Others are Department of State Security (DSS) (N12.2 billion), Nigeria Police Force (NPF) (N30.5 billion), National Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) (N3.6 billion).
However, the Senate approved N9.5 billion for NSA, N2.6 billion for Immigration, N10.2 billion for DSS, N27.3 billion for NPF and NSCDC, N3.6 billion.
The Senate had on Oct. 11 approved part of the budget of N189 billion for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as requested by the president.
The Senate approved the N242.4 billion requested for the election.
