President Muhammadu Buhari has signed the 2021 Supplementary Appropriation Bill into law, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (House of Representatives), Umar El-Yakub, has said.
This is coming nearly one month after the Federal Executive Council approved a draft supplementary budget of N895,842,462,917 for the year 2021. Addressing newsmen at the State House, Abuja on Monday, the liaison said the total sum of the supplementary budget assented to is N982,729,695,343.
El-Yakub said the act concentrates largely on funding the seemingly intractable security issues besetting the country and health concerns, among others. Particularly, he said the budget is for the procurement of equipment for the military and medical infrastructure as well as COVID-19 vaccines.
Remember the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, last month said the budget contains an aggregate sum of N770.60 billion to further improve the capacity of the nation’s defense and the security agencies to enable them to address current and emerging security challenges in the country. The minister amplified that a total of N83.56 billion expenditure was set aside in the budget for the COVID-19 vaccine program, covering 30 million vaccines from Johnson and Johnson and the cost of logistics related to the deployment of the vaccines. The budget also has a N40 billion provision to take care of the needs for allowances to the health, education sectors, and other wage-related issues. Ahmed had added that the supplementary also had N1.69 billion for the Nigeria Comprehensive AIDS Programme.
Ada Peter
