Abuja — The Independent National Electoral Commission( INEC) says it has a budgetary shortfall of about N8billion from the 2010 supplementary budget. This it says has made it difficult for the Commission to meet some of its capital expenditures especially as it regards its offices in states and local governments across the country.

Revealing this yesterday as a guest of the Voice of Nigeria, VON, media parley at its headquarters in Abuja, chairman of the Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, said this was as result of the review of the 2010 Appropriation Act which reduced INEC's funding by the stated sum. He , however, said the Commission would engage the government with a view to correcting the anomaly.

"Last week we received information that the budget of INEC appropriated under the 2010 budget has also been cut by N8billion. A lot of that fund has to do with capital projects. We thought our budget would not be tampered with when we were raising our supplementary budget but alas this is not the case.

"We had a budget gap which needed to be filled and we did and now we are suddenly told again that there is another gap of N8billion. Although N15billion has been given to us under he Supplementary Act, under the main appropriation, another N8billion has been deducted. Even if I have to deal with the problems, how do I deal with them with such financial regime?", Jega lamented.

Jega also revealed that results of all elections in the 2011 general election would be announced at every polling unit before getting to the collation center to enhance credibility, more so that that was the stipulation of the 2010 Electoral Act.

" We shall release the time table soon. As soon as the President signed the Electoral Act, INEC went far in preparing the time-table. We will release it soon after its approval by the Commission.

Meanwhile, Economic and Other Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, chairman, Farida Waziri has warned the INEC chairman to be wary of fake contractors who would be jostling round the Commission in a bid to swoop on the recently released N87billion meant for the voters' registration.