The Nigerian National Assembly amended key items in the 2025 budget on Tuesday, revising certain figures within the N54.9 trillion budget initially passed on February 13, 2025.
During plenary sessions, both the Senate and the House of Representatives made adjustments to the budget allocations for various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), with some figures being increased while others were reduced.
Despite these revisions, the total budget remains unchanged at N54.9 trillion.
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However, the capital expenditure has been reduced by more than N500 billion, while recurrent spending has increased by the same amount.
Following these adjustments, the capital allocation now stands at N23.439 trillion, while recurrent expenditure has risen to N13.588 trillion.
These figures differ from what was initially approved by lawmakers.
The decision to amend the budget followed a motion by Senator Adeola Olamilekan, Chairman of the Joint Committee on Appropriations, and Abubakar Kabir, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
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The motion was easily agreed to by lawmakers, who admitted that the errors needed urgent correction to ensure a more accurate distribution of resources.
Deputy Senate President, Senator Jubrin Barau, said normally, after every budget process, errors usually arise due to clerical staff mistakes.
“As a former chairman of the appropriation committee in the Senate as well as the House of Representatives, I know that normally, after every budget process, you will have some errors, some due to clerical staff errors or calculation errors. These errors are usually corrected and cleaned after scrutiny.
“Thank God, we have been able to discover these errors at this point before the bill has been assented to by the President. In which case, an amendment would have been required to correct the errors. So, I commend the chairman and members of the committee for being able to discover these errors. So the best thing is for us to move forward and get these errors corrected,” Senator Barau said.
In his remarks, the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, expressed gratitude to the Appropriation Committees of the two Chambers for quickly detecting the errors before the Appropriation budget was sent to Mr. President for assent.
“If you notice, we have to go into details; we have to ensure that the clarity becomes the mother of the game. And particularly the transparency exhibited by the two committees of the appropriations, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives. So we can now say that yes indeed, the appropriation bill has passed, which was total, remains the total, but just these errors that were detected and now corrected,” Senator Akpabio said.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Olamilekan, thanked the Senate President for his leadership role in the issue and also apologised to the House for the stress the Committee put them through.
“I just want to use this opportunity to thank Mr. President, the principal officer, and the entire Senate for their usual support and for the stress we have taken you through. As the Chairman of the Committee, we say we are sorry, just that we have no other choice than to go through this process,” he said.
When the budget was initially passed last week, N13.064 trillion had been allocated for recurrent expenditures, while capital projects received N23.963 trillion.
The first breakdown of the N54.99 trillion proposal also included N3.645 trillion for statutory transfers and N14.317 trillion for debt servicing.
The fiscal deficit stood at N13.08 trillion, with a deficit-to-GDP ratio of 1.52 per cent.
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