The Senate made some adjustments to the 2025 budget on Tuesday, just days after passing it.
The adjustments involved realigning some budget items earlier placed under the wrong subheads.
While some line items were reduced, others were increased across the recurrent and capital components.
However, the changes, which were jointly passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, did not increase the total budget size from the ₦54.99 trillion they passed on February 13.
Speaking while moving a motion for the adjustments, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Sen. Adeola Olamilekan, noted, “The Senate recalls that the 2025 Appropriations Bill was passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives on Thursday 13th February, 2025.
“Observes that at the point of cleaning and re-alignments the Joint Committee on Appropriations discovered some inadvertent errors in the underlisted line items passed by the Senate/House of Representatives.
“Notes that while the total sum of ₦54,990,165,355,396, statutory transfer of ₦3,645,761,358,925, as well as Debt Service of ₦14,317,142,689,548, remain the same as passed.
“The Recurrent (Non-Debt) expenditure was increased to ₦13,588,009,682,673 and the Capital reduced to ₦23,439,251,624,250 changed as a result of correction and realignment made by the Committee.
“Aware that the joint Committee on Appropriations had effected these corrections in the Appropriations Bill, thereby making the Long Title to read thus: ‘A Bill for an Act to authorise the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation the total sum of ₦54,990,165,355,396 only, of which ₦3,645,761,358,925 only is for Statutory Transfers, ₦14,317,142,689,548 only is for Debt Service, ₦13,588,009,682,673 only is for Recurrent (Non-Debt) Expenditure, while the sum of ₦23,439,251,624,250 only is for contribution to the Development Fund for Capital Expenditure for the year ending on the 31st day of December, 2025.’
“Relying on orders 1(B) and 52(6) of the Senate Standing Orders 2023 (As Amended).
“Accordingly resolves to: Rescind its decision on the affected line items, the long title as passed, and recommit same to the committee of supply for reconsideration and passage.”
The Deputy Senate President, Sen. Barau Jibrin, seconded the motion and made further explanations on what led to the changes.
He stated, “As a former chairman of the appropriation committee in the Senate as well as the House of Representatives, I know that normally, after every budget process, you will have some errors, some due to clerical staff errors or calculation errors.
“These errors are usually corrected and cleaned after scrutiny. Thank God, we have been able to discover these errors at this point before the bill has been assented to by the President and in which case, an amendment would have been required to correct the errors.
“So, I commend the chairman and members of the committee for being able to discover these errors. So the best thing is for us to move forward and get these errors corrected.”
Like Jibrin, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Sen. Sani Musa, also supported the motion, saying that it was in order as long as it did not imply that the National Assembly added any extra kobo to the budget.
As the Senate passed the amendment, President of the Senate, Sen. Godswill Akpabio, stressed again that the budget size was not increased.
“The total is the same, we are passing ₦54.99 trillion as was previously passed; it has not changed,” he said.
ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE