The allocation of N5.095 billion for the purchase of a presidential yacht in the 2023 supplementary budget has been scrapped from the budgetary allocation by the House of Representatives.
Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Abubakar Bichi, who disclosed this while speaking with news men , said that the budgetary allocation for student loan was increased from N5 billion to N10bn.
He said the committee also increased the budgetary allocation of the Ministry of Defence from N476bn to N546bn following security concerns.
Bichi further disclosed that the minimum wage for workers was considered and approved for onward transmission to the executive while promising proper legislative oversight to ensure 100 per cent implementation.
In the supplementary budget sent to the National Assembly by the federal government allocated N5 billion to purchase a presidential yacht.
The proposed sum was under the capital expenditure of the Nigerian Navy’s budget.
According to the breakdown, the Navy will require N62.8 billion for its operations, with recurrent expenditure and capital expenditure gulping N20.4 billion and N42.3 billion, respectively.
But Bichi said that the N5 billion for the presidential yacht had been yanked off from the budget.
According to him: “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 are aware, we have interaction with them yesterday. Currently, we have increased 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.
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“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 maintained 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 approved N100bn for housing.
“Service wide votes initially was N615 but currently we reduced to N515bn.
“For INEC, initially their budget was N18bn, and yesterday we had an interaction with the INEC chairman and he convinced us with his submissions and we maintained their N18bn.
“So far, we have approved N2,176, 791, 286, 33 trillion. We will continue to support the government so we can deliver democracy.”
On the presidential yacht, Bichi said: “Actually, as far we are concerned, we don’t have that anymore. We have increased the student loan. Initially, student loan was N5bn in the budget but we have increased it to N10bn so that our students can access that facility in order for them to go to school. We don’t have the Yatch anymore in the budget.”
He assured that lawmakers would ensure adequate oversight over the way the funds are spent, saying that “our members especially those standing committees oversight those project and ensure the money are used judiciously. From now to three months we are going to call them and ask them what they have done with the money. “
