The Senate Tuesday approved the request of President Muhammadu Buhari to amend the 2016 budget by re-assigning N180.8 billion to critical recurrent and capital items and increasing the amount to  N213,821,671,494.  The approval came on the heels of the presentation of the report of the Committee on Appropriations led by Senator  Danjuma Goje.

This is cheery news to the President who had made the request as a fall back to pumping up the funds needed for capital projects.

Buhari had last month written to the National Assembly, requesting that a total of N180bn be approved as virement of funds appropriated in the 2016 Appropriation Act; to attend to some critical capital and recurrent expenditures. The Senate considered the request and referred it to its committee on Appropriations for further legislative action.

Goje, while presenting the report  said, “the committee met with its House counterpart and deliberated on the course of action in order to abridge time. And also jointly had an interactive meeting with the affected MDAs on the virement, that is, the source of the funds and the expenditure MDAs in the Budget to clarify the need for the virement”.

He said the requested sum was increased to N213,821,671,494, because “the affected MDAs justified the need for intervention in their respective agencies and some also made the point that the amount proposed in the request was inadequate to meet the observed shortfall required to carry out their mandate and financial obligations.

“In the course of the interaction with the MDAs, the committee observed that there are other areas of critical need that are capable of stimulating the economy which additional funds can still be provided with monies vired from the Special Intervention Programme.”