The National Assembly yesterday began work on President Buhari’s bid to remove N180 billion from the 2016 budget. The virement is expected to fund the Federal Government’s amnesty programme and the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), among others.
The upper legislative chamber directed its committees in charge of appropriation and finance to do a thorough legislative work on the request and submit a report next week.
At a plenary presided by Deputy Speaker Sulaimon Yusuf Lasun, the House of Representatives also directed it’s committee on appropriation to consider Buhari’s request.
House Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila, who moved the motion for consideration of the matter, argued it was necessitated by shortfall in personnel cost, inadequate provision for the amnesty initiative, need to sustain the war against insurgency, and depreciation of the naira. He also cited the need by the Nigerian Airforce to cover foreign exchange differentials in the procurement of critical equipment.
Buhari had in October asked the National Assembly to approve the transfer of N180,839,254,439 billion from the N500 billion appropriated for the Special Intervention Programme to finance key projects.
According to the president, the amnesty programme was to receive a sum of N35 billion from the transfer. The request indicated: “The total recurrent expenditure required to be transferred is N166,630,886,954 while the capital expenditure required to be transferred is N14,208,367,476.”
The House of Representatives yesterday also faulted the Director General, Budget Office of the Federation, over his directive that agencies of government remit to the treasury funds released to them for the execution of capital projects.
Adopting a motion sponsored by Agbedi Yeitiemone Frederick (PDP, Sagbama/Ekeremor, Bayelsa), the lawmakers agreed to set up an ad hoc committee to investigate the matter and report back to the House within one week.
Frederick said his motion was premised on the fact that the Office had already directed the managing director of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) to remit to the treasury N8 billion out of the N10 billion already released to the agency for the execution of capital projects, leaving FERMA with only N2 billion.
Recalling that the National Assembly appropriated the sum of N21.8 billion to FERMA for the repair of dilapidated roads across the nation, he wondered why the Office came up with the directive, even when it was trite knowledge that FERMA had already advertised it’s priority capital projects in line with the Public Procurement Act 2007.
He argued that contractors who responded to the advertisement risked losing their hard-earned money, since they had already procured tenders documents in line with laid down rules and regulations.
He called for a need to check the Budget Office, since the planned execution of capital projects by FERMA and agencies of government would be crippled as a result.
