Ahmad Tejan Kabbah
Authoritative sources close to the funeral committee for the late former president of Sierra Leone Ahmad Tejan Kabbah say a budget of around Le 2 billion has been submitted by people representing his family and the Sierra Leone People's Party.
The amount was paid into the funerals account yesterday.
It is not immediately clear what the breakdown is but transport and security are said to be estimated at hundreds of millions of leones.
State House sources say the government had earlier given Le 100 million which is separate from another Le 100 million donated by the governing All People's Congress party.
Kabbah is to be laid to rest on Sunday 23 March with visiting dignitaries expected to fly in to grace the occasion. They include the presidents of Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria.
The funeral comes in the wake of some disagreement over the burial site of the late former president.
Family and opposition sources have told Politico that they had asked that he be laid to rest at the courtyard of parliament where lie the remains of the country's first Prime Minister Sir Milton Margai and the first president Siaka Stevens.
The government is said to have opposed this proposal saying, officially, that a mausoleum will be built by the Chinese where all former heads of states will be exhumed and buried.
An SLPP and family negotiator at the talks was said to have insisted that Kabbah be therefore buried at parliament building and be later exhumed and reburied at the proposed mausoleum. Again that was objected to, our sources say.
When former president Joseph Saidu Momoh of the APC died in August 2003, he was not buried at parliament by the government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. A senior SLPP party official has referred to as "a tit for tat action" the decision to bury Kabbah at the Kissy Road cemetery and not in parliament.
Meanwhile there will be a lying in state in parliament for Mr Kabbah on Friday and a vigil at the Miatta Conference on Saturday.
(C) Politico 20/03/14
