Senate Approves Buhari’s N180bn Virement Request, Adds N33bn

The Senate gave the approval on Tuesday during the plenary in Abuja where the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, pointed out that virement of funds in the national budget was not known to the constitution.

Recall that Buhari had in his letter to the National Assembly, requested for a transfer of N180.8bn out of the N500bn already appropriated for social intervention programme.

According to the President, the shortfalls was as a provisions for personnel costs, inadequate provision for the amnesty programme, continued requirements to sustain the war against insurgency and the depreciation of the naira.

While Buhari requested for the virement of N180.8bn from the funds appropriated for Special Intervention (Capital and Recurrent), the House of Representatives, which is concurrently working on the request, had raised it to N208bn, while the Senate had increased it to N213bn.

In its report, the Senate Committee on Appropriations recommended a virement of N208,821671,494, out of which N39,208,367,476 is from the capital component and N169,613,304,018 is from the recurrent component of the Special Intervention Programme in the 2016 Appropriation Act.

The committee said, “In the course of the interaction with the MDAs, the committee observed that there were other areas of critical needs that were capable of stimulating the economy, which additional funds can still be provided with money vired from the Special Intervention Programme.”

The Senate however approved an additional N5bn for the payment of local contractors in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals under the Ministry of Housing.

The list of virements approved included N71.8bn for Public Service Wage Adjustment contingency; cadet feeding (Police Academy, Kano), N932m; and amnesty programme, N35bn.

Others are internal operations of the Armed forces, N5.2bn; Operation Lafiya Dole, N13.9bn; National Youth Service Corps, N19.7bn; foreign missions, N16.3bn; and augmentation of meal subsidy/direct teaching and laboratory cost, N900m.

Also approved were virements for the Public Complaints Commission, N2.5bn; the Nigerian Air Force, N12.7bn; Presidential Initiative for the North-East, N1.5bn; and payment of local contractors, N250bn.

Ekweremadu, while raising a point of order during the plenary, however, stated that the constitution only allowed presentation of supplementary budget to cover up lapses in the main budget, and not virement of funds .

The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, said Ekweremadu’s point was well noted, adding that the virement should be taken as a supplementary budget..

However, Senator Abdullahi Adamu (Nasarawa West), stated that while the provisions of the constitution with respect to appropriation were not in contention, “there is a Fiscal Responsibility Act; Section 24 that provides for virement.”