By Naomi Sharang
The Senate has commenced work on President Muhammadu Buhari’s bid to remove N180.83 billion from the 2016 budget to fund the Amnesty and the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programmes.
This was just as the House of Representatives also on Wednesday commenced consideration of Federal Government’s request for the virement of N180.84 billion appropriated in the 2016 budget.
The Senate, on Wednesday in Abuja, directed its committees on Appropriation and Finance to do thorough legislative work on the presidential request and submit their reports next week.
It will be recalled that the president in October asked the National Assembly to approve a virement of N180. 83 billion from the N500billion appropriated for Special Intervention Programme, to finance other key projects.
According to the president, the Amnesty Programme is to get a total sum of N35 billion from the transfer.
The president’s request indicated that “the total recurrent expenditure required to be transferred is N166.63billion while the capital expenditure requirement to be transferred is N14.20billion’’.
A breakdown of the N180.83 billion shows that Public Service Wage Adjustment takes N71.80billion; the Amnesty Programme receives N35billion as against the mobilisation of corps members which receives N19.79billion.
Explaining the need to make more funds available to the amnesty programme, the president said:”Only N20 billion was provided in the 2016 budget for the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme’’.
“Consequently, the allowances to ex-militants have only been paid up to May 2016.This is creating a lot of restiveness and compounding the security challenge in the Niger Delta.’’
The president’s letter also explained why the sum of N71.8 billion had to be transferred from the intervention programme.
“Similarly, the provision for meal subsidy for the Unity Colleges is inadequate for the number of students in the schools.
“Also, there was no provision for feeding of cadets at the Police Academy, Wudil, Kano. These situations are hampering the operations of the affected agencies.
The provision for statutory transfer to the Public Complaints Commission (PCC) was reduced to N2billion in 2016 from N4billion in 2015.
Consequently, the agency is experiencing difficulty in paying salaries of its personnel as and when due.
“Due to the devaluation of the Naira, the budgetary provisions for the foreign missions are no longer sufficient to cover all their costs.
The provision for Presidential Initiative for the North East N12billion has a balance of less than N1.5bn, and there continue to be emerging challenges with the Internally Displaced persons (lDPs) in the zone.
In the House of Representatives, the commencement of consideration followed the adoption of a motion titled,“Request for Virement of Funds Appropriated in the Appropriation Act, 2016’’ moved by the House Majority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila (APC-Lagos).
The House resolved to refer the request to its Committee on Appropriations for further legislative action.
Moving the motion, Gbajabiamila said it followed a communication from President Muhammadu Buhari on Oct. 25, requesting for virement of funds in the Appropriation Act 2016.
He said that the request was in respect of funds appropriated for special intervention to fund some critical recurrent and capital items.
“The request was necessitated by a number of reasons, including shortfalls in the provision of personnel cost, inadequate provision for the amnesty programme, need to sustain war against insurgency and the depreciation of the naira.
“The request is also to provide for inadequacy in the provision for the National Youth Service Corps in the 2016 budget’’, Gbajabiamila said.
He explained that in the course of implementing the budget, MDAs presented issues pertaining to salary shortfalls, as it affected those that are not under the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
“And some MDAs under the scheme would be locked out as their personnel costs would not cover salaries for the rest of the year,’’ Gbajabiamila added.
It will be recalled that Mr President had requested for the approval of movement of about N180. 84 billion allocated to certain subheads in the 2016 budget to other areas he described as “critical expenditure items.”
Buhari also noted that budgeted revenues were running behind target largely due to the renewed violence in the Niger Delta without supplementary revenue sources.
The President also explained that due to the shortfalls and the other challenges, “the total recurrent expenditure requirement is N166.63 billion while the capital expenditure is N14.208 billion.”
