Parliament

Reps reject N5.09bn presidential yacht, raise students’ loan to N10bn

The House of Representatives has rejected the allocation of N5.09 billion for the purchase of a presidential yacht in the N2.1 trillion supplementary budget submitted by President Bola Tinubu to the lawmakers.

The lawmakers, however, increased the allocation for students’ loan to N10 billion as against N5.5 billion earlier provided in the supplementary budget.

The Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, Abubakar Bichi (APC, Kano), made this known while addressing newsmen after the passage of the supplementary budget in Abuja on Thursday, November 2, 2023.

Bichi disclosed that the lawmakers also increased the budgetary allocation of the Ministry of Defence from 476 billion to N546 billion over insecurity in the country.

He added that the minimum wage for workers was considered and approved for onward transmission to the executive, saying the lawmakers would ensure 100 per cent implementation.

The lawmaker said: “Actually, as far as we are concerned, we don’t have that (yacht) anymore. We have increased the student loan. Initially, the student loan was N5 billion in the budget but we have increased it to N10 billion so that our students can access that facility in order for them to go to school. We don’t have the yacht anymore in budget.

“As you know, the budget is about N2.1 trillion and the Ministry of Defence has about N456 billion but currently, the Ministry of Defence has the largest share because we know how important our security is.

“As you are aware, we had an interaction with them yesterday. Currently, we have increased their budget from N456 billion to N546,209,099,671 billion.

“For police formations and commands, we gave them N50 billion while the FCT has about N100 billion. You know FCT is very important to us, so we want to make sure that FCT can compete with any state in the world. That is why we gave them N100 billion.

“On the Office of National Security, their initial budget was N27 billion but currently we have increased their budget to N50 billion. For the State House, their initial budget was N28 billion and we maintained that.

“The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, you know how important that ministry is, we maintained their initial figure of N200 billion as well.

“For the Ministry of Housing, you know we have a serious housing deficit in the country and Mr. President’s agenda, he wants to build as much as he can, so we have approved N100 billion for housing.

“For INEC, initially their budget was N18 billion, and yesterday we had an interaction with the INEC Chairman and he convinced us with his submissions and we maintained their N18 billion.

“So far, we have approved N2,176,791,286,33 trillion. We will continue to support the government so we can deliver democracy.”

It would be recalled that the federal government, in the supplementary budget sent to the National Assembly by President Bola Tinubu, allocated N5.09 billion to purchase a presidential yacht.

The proposed sum was under the capital expenditure of the Nigerian Navy’s budget.

According to the breakdown, the Navy will require N62.8 billion for its operations, with recurrent expenditure and capital expenditure gulping N20.4 billion and N42.3 billion, respectively.

The Star