President Muhammadu Buhari, has written to the Senate, seeking approval for the virement of N180 billion from N500 billion appropriated for the Special Intervention Programme, to finance key projects including the mobilization of National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, members.
According to the letter read at the commencement of Tuesday’s plenary by the Deputy Senate President, Chief Ike Ekweremadu, the amnesty initiative and the Public Service Wage Adjustment, PSWA, numbered among projects to be financed, as amnesty will get a sum of N35 billion.
“The total recurrent expenditure requirement to be transferred is N166,630,886,954, while the capital expenditure requirement to be transferred is N14,208,367,476,” Buhari said.
A breakdown of the areas the money would be transferred showed PSWA taking the lion share of N71,800,215,270; amnesty, N35billion; mobilisation of corps members, N19,792,018,400.
Others are: foreign missions, N14,667,230,014; Operation Lafiya Dole, N13,933,093,000; Nigerian Air Force, N12,708,367,476; internal operations of the Armed Forces, N5,205,930,270; margin for increase in cost, N2 billion; Presidential Initiative for the North East, N1.5billion.
Also, contingency, salary shortfall for the Public Complaints Commission gets N1.2 billion each, even as feeding of cadets at the Police Academy, Kano, and augmentation of meal subsidy for Unity Colleges receive N932,400,000 and N900,000,000. The President, while explaining need for more funds, said: “Only N20,000,000,000 (already fully released) was provided in the 2016 budget for the Niger Delta amnesty programme. Consequently, 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 region.”
As regards NYSC, he said: “The provision for NYSC in the 2016 budget is inadequate to cater for the number of corps members to be mobilised this year. In fact, an additional N8.5 billion is required to cover the backlog of 129, 469 members, who are currently due for call-up but would otherwise be left out till next year, due to funding constraints.”
The NYSC had announced the date for the Orientation Course for prospective 2016 Batch B corps members, disclosing that the programme would run from 24th of November to 13th December .
Comments