By correspondent in Abuja.
House of Representatives, on Thursday,has approved President Bola Tinubu’s request for N500 billion for palliatives to Nigerians to reduce the hardship caused by subsidy removal.
The Representatives consequently also approved the presidential request for an amendment to the 2022 appropriation act.
The amendment passed the first, second and third readings during plenary on Wednesday.
The approval followed legislative contributions by members of the House at the plenary.
The president had said in a letter to the House that he hoped the lawmakers would consider his request “expeditiously”.
“I write to the House of Reps to approve the amendment of the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Act in accordance with the attached.
“The request has become necessarily important to, among other things, source for funds to provide palliative to mitigate the effect of the removal of fuel subsidy on Nigerians.
“Thus, we extracted N500 billion only from the 2022 Supplementary Act of N819,536,937,815 for the provision of palliative to cushion the effect of petrol subsidy removal,” the letter read.
Recall that in December, the National Assembly passed a supplementary budget of N819 billion for the 2022 fiscal year.
At the time, the legislature also extended the implementation of the 2022 budget till March 31.
In May, the National Assembly passed the amendment to the 2022 supplementary budget to extend implementation of the capital components to December 2023.
–Thenewszenith.
