The 2011 budget of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has indicated that the commission may either  employ some prudent measures in its projections and  spending  or face hard times  as the Presidency has slashed its 2011 budget from N51.7 billion proposed by the commission to N45.4 billion.

INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega was shocked by the  development when he discovered  the slash through the Budget office at  their budget defence at the National Assembly yesterday through the lawmakers.

On the  development, the INEC Chairman told the lawmakers that the commission had already defended its N51.7 budget before the Budget Office, adding that the Office did not communicate reduction to the commission.

His words, “We had several interactions with the Budget Office. We did our budget; we submitted and defended it at the Budget Office. What we have here now is a surprise to me,”

To reconcile the difference in the budget versions of the budget caused by the slash,  the Senate Committee had to halt the budget defence and directed the INEC Chairman to go back to the budget office and harmonise the figures.

Presenting the performance of the 2010 budget and general projection of the 2011 budget, Jega said actual releases for the commission in 2010 stood at N74.7 billion most of which had been deployed to procurement of equipments and payment of services in preparation for the April elections.

The Commission’s Chairman  insisted that INEC needed its complete overhead budget proposal, saying the commission needed to be adequately funded to meet the logistic requirements for the elections, adding that  there was a funding gap of N2 billion which the commission had captured in the 2011 budget.

According to him, the commission returned a total of N1.3 billion meant for the payment of new staff following the decision of the commission to stop the recruitment exercise last year.

Stating that there will be a thorough restructuring of the commission’s work force immediately after the April polls, Jega said the commission planned to employ additional 4,000 regular staff to boost its staff strength from the existing 12,000 to 16,000.

Meanwhile, the N9.3billion  cut in its budget,  The Tide  gathered  was principally in the overhead budget in line with the decision by government to slash overhead budgets across board.

This, the INEC boss said would not stop the engagement of ad hoc staff during electoral exercises such as registration of voters and actual polling.

INEC is to appear before the Senate committee next Tuesday with a harmonised budget for the commission.

Nneka Amaechi- Nnadi, Abuja