- Student loans get N10bn boost
BY VICTOR BUORO – In a bold move aimed at assuaging Nigerians’ anger over the N5.095 billion allocation for the Presidential yacht purchase in the 2023 supplementary budget, the House of Representatives on Thursday deleted the item as contained in budgetary proposal before the National Assembly.
This is as the lawmakers also said they have increased budgetary allocation for Student Loans to N10 billion from the initial also five billion proposed by the Executive.
Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Abubakar Bichi, told journalists in an interview on Thursday that in response to the mounting outcry by Nigrrians, the lower chamber decided to scrap the Yacht request and effectively yanked off the Five billion Naira from the supplementary appropriation in the overall public good
Bichi, who was responding to questions on the contentious Yacht, said; “Actually, as far we are concerned, we don’t have that anymore. We don’t have the Yacht anymore in budget.
“Also, we have increased the student loan. Initially, student loan was N5bn in the budget but we have increased it to N5bn so that our students can access that facility in order for them to go to school.”
According to him; the Committee also increased budgetary allocation of ministry of Defence from N476bn to N546bn following security concerns, adding that the minimum wage for workers was considered and approved for onward transmission to the executive while promising proper legislative oversight to ensure 100 percent implementation
Public disenchantment trailed the supplementary budget sent by President Bola Tinubu to the National Assembly with the Federal Government planning use N5 billion for presidential yacht purchase.
The amount was captured under the capital expenditure of the Nigerian Navy’s budget which indicated that N62.8 billion is required for its operations, with recurrent expenditure and capital expenditure gulping N20.4 billion and N42.3 billion respectively
“Actually We have submitted our reports to the House and after a careful consideration, the House has approved our submissions and the breakdown is as follows.
“As you know, the budget is about N2.1tn and the ministry of defence has about N456bn but currently ministry of defence has the largest share because we know how important our security is.
“As you aware, we have interaction with them yesterday. Currently, we have increase their budget from N456bn to N546, 209,099,671 billion.
“For Police formation and command, we gave them N50bn while the FCT has about N100bn. You know FCT is very important to us, so we want to make sure that FCT can compete with any state in the world. That is why we gave them N100bn.”
Addressing the budgetary allocation for security, the Committee Chairman said; “On the office of National Security, their initial budget was N27bn but currently we have increased their budget to N50bn. For the State House, their initial budget was N28bn and we have decided to maintain that.
“On ministry of Agriculture and food security, you know how important that ministry is, we maintained their initial figure of N200bn as well. For ministry of housing, you know we have serious housing deficit in the country and Mr. President agenda, he wants to build as much as he can, so we have approve N100bn for housing.”
Bichi also said that Service wide votes initially put at N615 has been reduced to N515bn, while INEC budget was maintained at N18bn following an interaction with the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmoud.
Overall, the Committee Chairman said the NASS would always ensure adequate oversight in the manner public funds are spent for the general good of Nigerians and the country.
