The National Assembly has said it in increased the 2025 Appropriation Bill, presented to President Bola Tinubu, to the federal legislature, last December, to enable the government make critical intervention in the health sector amongst others.
President Bola Tinubu had on December 18, 2024, presented a budget estimate of N49,740,165,355,396 to the National Assembly for 2025 fiscal year. However, on February 5, President Tinubu requested the parliament, to raise the budget by N4,530,479,970,637.
Regardless, the parliament further increased the budget by N719,520,029,363, bringing it to a total N54,990,165,355,396.
The co-chairnan, National Assembly Joint Committee on Appropriation, Abubakar Bichi, to journalists, in Abuja, that the increase in the budget was necessary to cater for persons , who have some health challenges, following the withdrawal of funding from the United States government.
Besides,Bichi explained that some key government agencies had requested for additional appropriations, when they appeared for the budget defence, to enable them meet critical challenges in the 2025 fiscal year.
“As you know the United States government has withdrawn its support for some countries in terms of providing health support, and Nigeria is among them, so the president proactively requested an addition of $200 million, which is about N300 billion, to cater for people who have that challenge of tuberculosis, HIV, malaria, and polio.
“Also, we have some genuine requests from some agencies like INEC, NFIU, DSS, and so on . So that’s what to make it N700 billion additional. There are some critical projects, such as rail projects, road infrastructures, agriculture, as well as education. So that’s where the money will go.
“Before we increased the budget, we had a meeting with the Ministry of Finance, Nigerian Custom Service, FIRS, and they have confirmed to us that they will be able to come up with enough funding for the budget,” the Appropriations Committee co-chairnan stated.
The major highlights of the budget include an appropriation of N144,485,422,787 for the Presidency; for security, the Ministry of Defence got N604,917,085,118; Ministry of Interior N49,528,753,342; Ministry of Polie Affairs, N88,019,440, 957 and the Office of the National security Adviser, N316,863,641, 934; While the Ministry of Works got N2,044,698,093,503; the Ministries of Agriculture and Food Security, Innovation, Science and Technology and Health and Social Welfare got N1,955,583,580,722, N1,201,151,859,526 and N1,154,228,785,538 respectively.
Also, the sum of N953, 931,558,706 was appropriated for the Ministry of Education, with the Ministries of Water Resources and Sanitation and Environment getting N578,398, 497,644 and N86,628,776,906 respectively.
For regional development commissions, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) got N626,533,344,370; South East Development Commission, South West development, South South Development Commission and North Central Development Commission got N140,000,000,000 each while the North West Development Commission , N145,000,000,000; South West Development Commission, with the North East Development Commission getting N240,997,982,557.
N140,000,000,000 was appropriated for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). While the National Judicial Council (NJC) and the National Assembly got N521,625,739,236 and N344,852,880,669 respectively.
