President Muhammad Buhari has transmitted the 2021 Supplementary Budget to the Senate for consideration and approval.
In the letter, which was read by the President of the Senate, Sen. Ahmad Lawan (APC: Yobe) at the plenary session of Tuesday, 22 June 2021, President Buhari stated that it had become necessary to prepare the 2021 Supplementary Budget considering the need to make provisions for the procurement and administration of COVID-19 vaccines.
In addition, President Buhari mentioned that security and law enforcement agencies need to procure more equipment and other resources in response to the prevalent security challenges across the country. According to him, the Ministry of Defence had carefully scrutinized its procurement needs which represents the minimum requirement necessary to secure the country and address current external and internal security challenges.
President Buhari proposed the sum of N895, 842, 465, 917 as the 2021 Supplementary Budget which is expected to also fund the:
- Recurrent and Capital Expenditure component for defence and security and capital supplementation from new borrowings;
- Treatment of an additional 50,000 patients under the Nigeria Comprehensive AIDS Program in States (NCAPS) which was inexplicably removed by the National Assembly in the 2021 Budget;
- Procurement and installation of new oxygen plants nationwide and repairs of oxygen plants in hospitals in the FCT;
- Public Service Wage Adjustments in the health and other sectors;
- COVID-19 vaccine programme across the country.
President Buhari informed lawmakers that other needs currently abound in other sectors, however, the proposals in Supplementary Budget has been limited to the aforementioned critical areas. Following from this therefore, the 2022 Budget which is expected to be presented in September 2021, will take into consideration other outstanding requests.
