Reps Set To Pass N288bn Additional Supplementary Budget For FCTA

The House of Representatives has set the machinery in motion to pass the N288 billion additional supplementary statutory budget for the Federal Capital Territory (FCTA).

This came as the House at plenary yesterday passed the FCT Supplementary Statutory Appropriations Bill (Budget), 2024 through first and second readings.

President Bola Tinubu had on Tuesday written the House, seeking the approval of additional supplementary statutory budget for FCTA with unknown figures hitherto.

At plenary yesterday, the executive bill was slated for both first and second readings which passed respectively.

Out of the sum of N288 billion, overhead cost gulped N31.1 billion while the remaining N256.9 billion is for capital expenditure.

After the bill(budget) was passed for second reading, it was referred to the Committee on FCT chaired by Hon. Aliyu Muktar Betara for further legislative action.

Consequently, the committee after plenary held budget defence session with the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike and adopted the proposal while it will lay the report on Thursday for consideration, adoption and possibly third reading.

The committee’s chairman, Betara, harped on the need for accelerated consideration and passage of the Appropriation bill for the implementation of critical developmental projects across the nation’s capital city.

While noting that most of the projects captured in the statutory budget, he observed that the Senate committee on FCT is also working on the proposed Supplementary budget.

Betara said the panel was mandated to lay the report on the supplementary budget at Thursdays plenary, “because there are critical projects that needed to start by next week because of the timeframe.”

He said the FCT minister during the consultation affirmed that most of the augmentation requested for in the proposed supplementary budget were captured in the 2024 statutory budget passed by the National Assembly.

“There are no new projects, the only new projects are just two line items,” he noted.