The Senate, the foremost lawmaking authority in Nigeria, has passed the 2024 Appropriation Bill, inflating the budget from the N27.5trillion presented by President Bola Tinubu, by about N1.2 trillion, to a grand total of N28.7trillion.
Inflating budgets submitted by the executive appears to have been a pastime of past Senates in Nigeria and the Senate of the present 10th National Assembly appears to be no exception.
The passage of the bill, followed the approval of report of the Senate Committee on Appropriation at plenary on Saturday.
While presenting the report, Sen. Solomon Adeola, the Committee Chairman, , said that the Committee adopted the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Paper (MTEF/FSP) approved by the National Assembly in preparing the budget.
He said the committee also adopted the 77.96 dollar per barrel of oil benchmark and 1.78 mbpd standard but with an 800 naira to dollar exchange rate, as against 750 naira proposed by the executive.
Solomon also listed other highlights of the bill, including a total aggregate expenditure of N28.7trillon, statutory transfers of N1.7trillion, recurrent expenditure of N8.7 trillion, while the capital expenditure component stood at N9.9trillon.
He said the Committee in processing the bill worked closely with the executive harmoniously.
Adeola said through the closely and harmonious appropriation process, the executive forwarded request for additional funding of some items on expenditure that were not included in the bill as submitted by the President.
He, however said that the committee observed that the 2024 Appropriation Bill was presented to the National Assembly late.
This, he said was against the Fiscal Responsibility Act that required the Bill to be presented not later than three months before the next financial year.
Adeola also said there were inconsistencies in the revenue of some Government Owned Enterprises.(GOEs).
He further said that there was removal of some agencies personnel costs from the Federal Government payroll and inadequate funding in some allocation of government Ministries, Departments and Agencies(MDAs).
Adeola said to ensure thorough scrutiny of budget proposal, the executives should comply with the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
He also urged the executive to ensure compliance with the provisions of relevant extant laws, as it concerns government agencies.
The senator urged agencies removed from federal government budget to step up their revenue generation, fund itself and remit more to Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF).
Speaking later on Saturday, The Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, Abubakar Bichi, said the increment of the N26.5trn 2024 budget by N1.2trn was due to revenue prospects from Government Owned Enterprises and possible inflation.
Addressing journalists at the National Assembly Complex shortly after the passage of the 2024 budget estimates, Bichi said, “We have inflation and exchange rate for the dollar, the executive proposed N750 to the dollar, but after we studied carefully, we look at it and we know it is unrealistic.
“So we increased it to N800 (to a dollar). And also we had a meeting with Government-Owned Enterprises and we believe that their submissions are not enough. They have agreed to increase their revenue to N700bn. That was how we are able to get that N1.2 trillion, which we applied to capital.
“This is the first time the capital is bigger than recurrent. We appropriated about N850bn to education. We gave them a lot of money. I believe this budget is brilliant and Nigerians will see a lot of impacts.”
The Senate passed the 2024 budget for a third reading on Saturday and also increased the bill by N1.2tn, moving the budget from N27.5tn to N28.7tn.
President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday, November 29, presented a total of N27.5tn to a joint section of the National Assembly.
In a related development, the Senate on Saturday approved the request by President Bola Tinubu to borrow another $7.8 billion and €100 million, for the purported reason of “scaling up infrastructure development in the country”.
The credit facility is part of the 2022 – 2024 borrowing plan of the Federal Government.
Tinubu had said that the Federal Executive Council under former President Muhammadu Buhari approved the loan facility on May 15, 2023, to finance health, education, infrastructure, agriculture, insecurity, and other sectors.
The letter from the President had read, “The Senate may wish to note that the past administration approved the 2022 – 2024 borrowing plan at the Federal Executive Council which was held on the 15th day of May 2023.
“The project cut across all sectors with specific emphasis on infrastructure, agriculture, health, education, water supply, security and employment as well as financial management reforms, among others.
“The total facility of the projects and programmes under the borrowing plan is 7,864,508,559 dollars and then in Euro, 100 million euros respectively.”
The President’s letter noted, “The senate is invited to note that following the removal of fuel subsidy and its impact on the economy in the country, African Development Bank and the World Bank Group have indicated interest to assist the country in mitigating the economic shores and recent reforms with a sum of $1 billion and $2 billion respectively.
“In addition to the Federal Executive Council approved 2022-2024 external borrowing plan. Consequently, the required approval is 7,864,508,559 dollars and in terms of euros, 1000 million euros.”
The lawmakers approved the president’s request after considering and adopted the report of its committee on Local and Foreign Debt.
In addition, the Senate approved Tinubu’s request to securitize the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) N7.3trn Ways and Means advances to the Federal Government.