President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday signed the 2021 Supplementary Appropriation Bill into law barely few weeks after its passage by the National Assembly.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) had about a month ago approved a draft supplementary budget of N895,842,462,917 for the year 2021.
Briefing journalists at the State House on the signing of the bill by the President, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (House of Representatives), Umar El-Yakub,
said the total sum of the supplementary budget assented to was N982,729,695,343.
El-Yakub explained that the provisions of the enacted fiscal document focused mainly on funding the seemingly intractable security and health challenges in the country.
Specifically, the President’s aide said that the budget provided primarily for the procurement of equipment for the military and medical infrastructure as well as COVID-19 vaccines.
The Senior Special Assistant, Media and Publicity to the President, Garba Shehu, later in a statement, gave further insights into the funding provisions of the supplementary budget.
He stated: “Of the amount, N123.3 million is for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure while the sum of the N859.3bn is for contribution to the Development Fund for the capital expenditure for the year ending on the 31st day of December, 2021,” Mr Shehu said.
“President Buhari commended the National Assembly for the expeditious consideration and approval of the supplementary budget, assuring that the executive arm of government would ensure the timely delivery of capital projects to achieve the laudable objectives of the Budget”, he added.
It would be recalled that Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, had last month said the Supplementary budget bill provided for an aggregate sum of N770.60 billion to further strengthen the capacity of the nation’s defence and the security agencies to enable them tackle the nation’s increasingly worrisome security challenges.
According to her, the sum of N83.56 billion was provided in the budget for the COVID-19 vaccine programme, covering 30 million vaccines as well as logistics costs associated with the deployment of the vaccines.
In addition, she disclosed that N40 billion was also provided for in the fiscal bill as allowances to the health, education sectors and other wage related issues while N1.69 billion for the Nigeria Comprehensive AIDS Programme.
