From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari has approved a draft supplementary budget of N895,842,462,917 for 2021.
The budget is mainly for the procurement of equipment for the military and COVID-19 vaccines.
A bill is therefore to be presented to the National Assembly for approval of the supplementary budget, in line with constitutional provisions.
Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this while briefing State House Correspondents on the outcome of yesterday’s meeting.
She said the budget contains an aggregate sum of N770.60 billion to further enhance the capacity of the defence and the security agencies to address current and emerging security challenges in the country.
The minister further said N83.56 billion expenditure is set aside in the budget for COVID-19 vaccine programme, covering 30 million vaccines from Johnson and Johnson and the logistics costs related to the deployment of the vaccines.
Similarly, the budget also has N40 billion provision to take care of the needs for allowances to the health, education sectors and other wage-related issues.
Ahmed said in the supplementary budget, there is also N1.69 billion for the Nigeria Comprehensive AIDS Programme.
She said: “Today, the Federal Ministry of Finance Budget and National Planning presented to council a proposal to seek approval for the draft Federal Government of Nigeria 2021 supplementary budget. 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 Nigeria is able to meet its commitment under the Nigerian Comprehensive AIDS programme, as well as the urgent need to specifically enhance the capacity of our military and para-military agencies to tackle the various security challenges that we currently have in the country. The council on that note approved the 2021 supplementary appropriation bill, in an aggregate expenditure of N895,842,462,917.”
