The Federal Executive Council has approved the 2021 supplementary budget draft of eight hundred and ninety-five billion Naira N895 billion. This was revealed by the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed while briefing State house correspondents after the council meeting which was presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, in Abuja on Wednesday. Mrs Ahmed noted that the approval was based on the need for funding to ensure that Nigeria is able to meet its commitment under the Nigerian Comprehensive AIDS programme. She further stated that the supplementary budget will be utilized on security, Covid-19 vaccines, salaries and other health-related expenditure as well as a recurrent component of the defence and security expenditures. “Today the Federal Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning presented to council a proposal to seek approval for the draft Federal Government of Nigeria 2021 supplementary budget.” She said.
She also cited that a bill would be presented to the National Assembly for approval.
“The council on that note approved the 2021 supplementary appropriation bill, in an aggregate expenditure of N895,842,917,” she added.
“The Council deliberated on our proposal and approved as follows: Having noted the need for the urgent procurement of vaccines and also the need for funding to ensure that Nigeria is able to meet its commitment under the HIV, the Nigeria Progressive AIDS Programme in State, Council approved that we should be able to proceed to the National Assembly with the bill in the total sum
“Also, Council noted the urgent to specifically enhance the capacity of our military and paramilitary agencies to tackle the various security challenges that we currently have I the country
“The total of this expenditure is made up of at N83.56 billion for COVID-19 vaccine programme, covering 30 million vaccines from Johnson and Johnson and the logistics costs related to the deployment of that 30 million vaccines.
“It also contains the sum of N1.69 billion for the Nigeria Comprehensive AIDS Programme that is currently operating in the states and an additional contingency provision of N40 billion under the public service-wide adjustments to take care of the needs for allowances to the health sector, to the education sector and other wage-related issues. This is an incremental provision of over N100 billion that is already provided in the 2021 budget.
“The Council also approved an aggregate sum N770.60 billion to further enhance the capacity of the Defense and the security agencies to address current and emerging security challenges in our country.”
After sharing other details and figures in the budget she concluded that “Finally, this approval also contains an approval to borrow the sum of 722.53 billion for security expenditures and these are the capital components of the security expenditure in the absence of any other additional supplementary sources of borrowing. This borrowing would be done from the domestic international capital market.”
