By Nathaniel Zacchaeus, Abuja
The National Assembly has rescinded its approval of some items in the 2025 Appropriation Bill, which it passed last Thursday, and made some corrections in the affected line items on the N54.9trn total estimates.
At yesterday’s plenary, both the Senate and the House of Representatives corrected the earlier figures for some MDAs, with some increasing while others decreasing.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Solomon Adeola, and the House of Representatives Committee on Rules and Business, Hon. Francis Waive (APC, Delta), presented separate motions for the rescission in both chambers.
In his lead debate, Adeola said, “The Senate recalls that the 2025 Appropriations Bill was passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives on Thursday, February 13, 2025.
“Observes that at the point of cleaning and realignments, the Joint Committee on Appropriations discovered some inadvertent errors in the under-listed line items passed by the Senate/House of Representatives.
“Notes that while the total sum of N54,990,165,355,396, statutory transfer of N3,645,761,358,925, as well as Debt Service of N14,317,142,689,548, remain the same as passed.
“The Recurrent (Non-Debt) expenditure was increased to N13,588,009,682,673, and the Capital reduced to N23,439,251,624,250 changed due to correction and realignment made by the Committee.
“Aware that the joint Committee on Appropriations had effected these corrections in the Appropriations Bill.
“The long title read thus: A Bill for an Act to authorise the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation the total sum of N54,990,165,355,396 only, of which N3,645,761,358,925 only is for Statutory Transfers, N14,317,142,689,548 only is for Debt Service, N13,588,009,682,673 only is for Recurrent (Non-Debt) Expenditure, while the sum of N23,439,251,624,250 only is for contribution to the Development Fund for Capital Expenditure for the year ending on December 31, 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.”
In seconding the motion, the Deputy Senate President, Barau Jibrin, said: “I rise to second the motion ably moved by Senator Olamilekan, Chairman of Senate Appropriations Committee.
“As a former chairman of the appropriation committee in the Senate and the House of Representatives, I know that usually, after every budget process, you will have some errors, some due to clerical staff or calculation errors.
“These errors are usually corrected and cleaned after scrutiny. Thank God we were able to discover these errors at this point before the bill was assented to by the President, 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.”
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Sani Musa (APC – Niger East), also supported the motion.
For his part, while presenting the motion in the House of Representatives, Hon. Waive said the action became necessary because the Joint Appropriation Committee noticed errors in the figures earlier passed.
He said while the final figure of N54.99trn, the statutory transfer of N3.64trn, and the debt service of N14.317trn remained unchanged, the recurrent (non-debt) expenditure of N13.558trn and capital budget of N23.439trn were affected.
According to him, the National Assembly inadvertently passed N13.064trn for recurrent expenditures and N23.93 for the capital budget on February 13.
According to the document, the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Police Affairs, National Pension Commission, Universities Pensions, Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (civilian pensions), Pension Transition Arrangement Directorate, and a few other agencies had their budget figures reduced in the document that was earlier passed.
Also, he said that the Presidency, Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation, Office of the National Security Adviser, Office to the Secretary to Government of the Federation, Federal Ministries of Agriculture and Food Security, Works, Labour and Employment, Transportation, Innovation, Science and Technology, Education, Environment, Health and Social Welfare among others, had their budget estimate increased in the document earlier passed.
Waive said that the lawmakers were required to effect the corrections identified in the document during the compilation process by the Joint Committee, adding that the rescission and passage would not affect the total estimates of the central figure of N54.99trn.
