Ogun State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, has refuted claims that the State Government plans to spend close to N1bn for the conduct of the upcoming local government election.

While reacting to some media reports which quoted the Ogun State Independent Electoral Commission, OGSIEC, as having said that it will spend close to N1bn on the October 8, 2016 local government election, the governor said, “there is no iota of truth in that.”

Governor Amosun said: “The N927 million that is being bandied around is the annual budgetary request of OGSIEC and not money that they have been allocated by the state government.”

He added that, “this budgetary request was not even about the local government election but rather meant to cover all sorts of expenses of OGSIEC, including their request to construct a new office, buy official cars, buy new ballot boxes and a host of other capital projects.”

The Ogun State governor said: “These are capital projects that they have indicated interest in accomplishing this year. However, we have not given them money for any of those things because the state government cannot afford such cost for now.

“In fact, for instance, rather than build a new office as they have projected in that estimate, we have provided them a befitting office. So in all, I don’t think they have received more than N50m so far.”

•Photo shows Governor Amosun.