Buhari Requests Senate’s Approval For N895bn Supplementary Budget

President Muhammadu Buhari has requested the Senate to approve a supplementary budget of N895bn.

The Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, on Tuesday read an official communication from the President requesting the National Assembly to give consent.

Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council had approved the N895bn on June 9.

The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, said that the supplementary budget was for enhancement of the capacity of the Nigerian military and for vaccine programme among others.

She said, “It was also based on the urgent need to specifically enhance the capacity of the military and para-military agencies to tackle the various security challenges in the country.

“The council on that note approved the 2021 supplementary appropriation bill, in an aggregate expenditure of N895,842,462,917.

“The total of this expenditure is made up of N83.56bn for COVID-19 vaccine programme, covering 30 billion vaccines from Johnson and Johnson vaccines and the logistics cost related to the deployment of that vaccine.

“It also contains the sum of N1.69bn for the Nigerian Comprehensive AIDS programme currently operating in the States and an additional contingency provision of N40bn under the public service-wide wage adjustments to take care of the needs for allowances to the health and education sectors and other wage-related issues.”