House Of Reps Passes Supplementary Budget, Scraps Proposed Presidential Yachts

The House of Representatives, has passed the N2.176 trillion 2023 supplementary budget presented to the National Assembly by President Bola Tinubu.

The House however moved the N5billion proposed for a presidential yacht to the Students Loan Scheme.

The chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, Hon Abubakar Bichi, while giving a breakdown of the supplementary budget approved by the House, said that the budget for Defence was increased from N456 billion to N546,209,009,671, because of the security situation in the country.

He explained that the budget for the Office of the National Security Adviser was also increased from N27billion to N50billion. While the Service Wide Vote was reduced from N615 billion to N515 billion.

“The Ministry of Defence has the largest share; because you know how our security is. we have interaction with them and they requested for additional funds. And we increased the N456billion (proposed) to N546 billion. Police formation and Commands, we gave them N50billion .

“The FCT, they have about N100 billion. The FCT, you know is very important to us. That is why we want to make sure that the FCT can compete with any city in the world. That is why we have decided to give them N100billion.

“Office of the National Security Adviser, you know how important that office is. Their initial budget was N27billion, but we have increased their budget to N50billion, while the state House, their initial budget was 28billion and we still maintained that figure. “

“Ministry of Agriculture, we know how important that ministry is, we are talking about the food security, and off course it is very critical and important to our people across the country. And we have maintained the initial figure of N200 billion. .

Ministry of Housing, you know we have a serious housing deficit in this country. And Mr President agenda, he is doing as much as he can. So, we have approved N100bilion for Ministry of Housing.

“Service wide vote, initially was N615 billion, but we reduced it to N515billion. For INEC, their request was 18billion, yesterday we had an engagement with the INEC chairman and he has convinced us. So far, we have approved the sum of two trillion, one hundred and seventy six billion, seven hundred and ninety one million, two hundred and eighty six thousand and thirty-three naira (N2,176,791,286,033 only). “ He said.

The Appropriation Committee chairman, while responding to question on presidential yacht said: “As far as we are concerned we don’t have that Presidential yacht anymore. We have increased the Student Loan. If you can recall, the student loan was N5billion in the budget, but now we have increased it from N5 to N10 billion, so that our Students can be able to access that facility in order for them to be able to go to school and to be able to afford them. Actually, we don’t have yacht anymore.” Hon Bichi explained.

He promised that the House will ensure a robust oversight of the budget to ensure that the supplementary budget is implemented.

He also disclosed that the minimum wage for workers was considered and approved for onward transmission to the executive while promising proper legislative oversight to ensure 100 percent implementation

Olusola Akintonde