The Federal House of Representatives has approved the N2.17 trillion supplementary budget, without the Presidential yacht.
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The House had on Thursday approved the budget transmitted to it by President Tinubu, but first transferred the money budgeted for the yacht to student loans.
Abubakar Bichi, chairman of the house of representatives committee on appropriations briefed journalists after the passage of the supplementary budget.
He stated that the presidential yacht was not contained in the approved supplementary budget, adding that the student loan budgetary allocation was increased.
“As far as we are concerned we don’t have that presidential yacht anymore. We have increased the student loan,” he said.
“We have increased the student Loan. If you can recall, the student loan was N5bn in the budget, but now we have increased it from N5bn to N10bn so that our students will be able to access that facility for them to be able to go to school and to be able to afford them,” the lawmaker said.
President Bola Tinubu had written the National Assembly seeking the approval of the sum of N2,176,791,286,033 as the 2023 supplementary budget to address labour wage adjustments, security, and more.
The bill expeditiously scaled readings in both upper and lower chambers as lawmakers said it was for the benefit of the country.
The federal government had planned to spend N5 billion for the purchase of a presidential yacht, under the capital expenditure of the Nigerian Navy’s budget.
The yacht provision was met with outcry from Nigerians, given the rising cost of maintenance and the call to cut the cost of governance.
In his media briefing, Bichi said,
“Today, our committee has submitted our report, and the House after careful consideration, approved our submission and the breakdown is as follows:
“As you know, the budget is about N2.177 trn and the Ministry of Defence has N456bn but currently, they have the largest share because we know how important our security is. As you are aware, we interacted with them yesterday and they requested additional funding so that they can continue their work.
“So, we have increased their budget from N476 to N546bn.
“Then Police Formation and Command, we gave them N50bn while the FCT has about N100 bn. You know FCT is very important to us because we want to make sure FCT can compete with any city in the world.
“Office of the National Security Adviser, we know how important that office is. Initially, the allocation was N27bn but currently, we have increased their budget to N50bn.
“The initial budget for the State House was N28bn and we still maintain their figure at N28bn as well.
“Ministry of Agriculture, you know how important that ministry is, you are talking about food security, and of course, it’s critical to our people across the nation.
“So, we have maintained their initial figure of N200bn as well.
“You know how serious the housing deficit in this country is and in Mr President’s agenda, he wants to build as many houses as he can. So, we have approved N100 bn for the Ministry of Housing.”
The Thursday approval of the supplementary budget followed the consideration and approval of the report of the Committee on Appropriations.
The report titled, “A Bill for an Act to authorise the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation the total sum of N2,176,791,286,033 for the year ending 31 December 2023” was laid by Bichi.
Out of the total of N2.176 trn approved, N18 billion is for statutory transfers, N992.8bn is for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure while the sum of N1.165 trn is for contribution to the Development Fund for capital expenditure.
Nnamdi Maduakor is a Writer, Investor and Entrepreneur
