Senate amends allocation for military, agriculture in 2025 appropriation bill

The Senate has amended key allocations in the 2025 Appropriations Bill after identifying discrepancies during the final review by the Joint Committee on Appropriations.

The changes include a slight reduction in funding for the Ministry of Defence, now set at ₦2.49 trillion from ₦2.51 trillion, while the allocation for the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security was trimmed from ₦1.95 trillion to ₦1.83 trillion. A minor adjustment was also made for the Ministry of Police Affairs, reduced by ₦1 billion to ₦1.224 trillion.

Pension allocations saw more significant changes. The total funding for pensions, gratuities and retirement benefits was increased to ₦1.44 trillion from ₦950 billion. Military pensions and gratuities were raised to ₦383.9 billion from ₦252.6 billion, and the National Pension Commission’s allocation jumped to ₦804.7 billion from ₦529.4 billion.

Despite these revisions, the overall budget remains unchanged at ₦54.99 trillion, with statutory transfers and debt service fixed at ₦3.64 trillion and ₦14.31 trillion respectively.

However, recurrent (non-debt) expenditure has risen to ₦13.58 trillion, while capital expenditure has been reduced to ₦23.43 trillion.

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Citing Senate Standing Orders, lawmakers have rescinded their previous decisions on the affected items and recommitted the revised bill to the Committee of Supply for reconsideration and passage.

The now amended bill was passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives last Thursday.