Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has asked the National Assembly to approve the 2021 Supplementary Appropriation Bill of N895.8bn.
The request was contained in a letter the President sent to the Senate chamber which was read by the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, at Tuesday’s plenary.
“It is with pleasure that I forward herewith, Supplementary Appropriation Bill 2021 for the kind consideration and approval by the Senate.
“The supplementary budget request is for a total sum of N895,842,465,917,” it stated in part.
Buhari noted that the government has proposed to fund N45.63bn of the N83.56bn required for the COVID-19 vaccine programme by drawing on existing World Bank loans which would be structured, as well as other grants totalling $113.2m.
He said, “The balance of N37.93bn required for COVID-19 vaccines, salaries and other health-related expenditures totalling N41.6bn and N48.2bn recurrent component of defence and security will be funded by borrowing N135bn from some special reserve levy accounts.
“We propose to fund the balance of N722.4bn for capital expenditure on defense and security and capital supplementation from new borrowings in the absence of any supplementary revenue sources.
“It has become necessary to prepare the 2021 supplementary appropriation bill considering the urgent need to make provision for procurement and administration of COVID-19 vaccines.”
According to him, the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and the procurement terms was still uncertain at the time of finalising the 2021 Budget, hence there was no provision in the 2021 Appropriation Act for the procurement and administration of COVID-19 vaccines.
He, however, noted that the Federal Ministry of Health and the National Primary Health Care Development Agency have now developed a COVID-19 vaccine programme for the country.
“Under the vaccine programme, 70 per cent of eligible Nigerians are to be vaccinated between 2021 and 2022.
“In addition, our security and law enforcement agencies urgently need to procure additional equipment and other resources in response to the prevalent security challenges across the country.
“The Ministry of Defence has carefully scrutinised these procurement needs which the military authorities claim to represent the minimum requirement to secure our country and address current internal and external security challenges,” Buhari explained.
Additional funds are required to meet the commitment to treat additional 50,000 patients under the Nigerian Comprehensive Aids Programmes in States as the amount provision in the 2021 appropriation bill for this purpose was inexplicably cut by the National Assembly, he said.
“In order to address the urgent problem of oxygen availability in the country and avoid the potential loss of lives, provision was made for the procurement and installation of new oxygen plants nationwide and repairs of oxygen plants in FCT hospitals.
“It is also necessary to provide additional funds for public service-wide wage adjustments to cater for sundry wage-related issues in the health and other sectors which, if not resolved, can add to the prevalent sense of instability in the polity,” the President said.
This currently abounds in many other sectors, he said.
“However, we have limited the supplementary budget proposal to just these critical and emergency areas of need due to our severe financial fiscal constraints.
“All other means will be deferred to the 2022 Budget, which we plan to present in September of this year.
“Given the urgency of the request, I seek the cooperation of the National Assembly for expeditious legislative action on the supplementary appropriation bill 2021,” Buhari added.
