The House of Representatives’ Special Ad Hoc Committee on Petroleum Industry Bill has laid its report.
The Majority Whip and Chairman of the committee, Mohammed Monguno, laid the report at the plenary on Wednesday.
The leadership of the House had earlier on Tuesday met with the committee.
While the Southern and Northern caucuses had met separately on the controversial bill, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Melee Kyari, was scheduled to meet with the entire House later on Wednesday.
There were indications that the House may consider and adopt the report on Thursday.
The Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, on Wednesday, asked members to send their aides to the PIB committee’s secretariat to pick copies of the report.
Also, the 2021 Supplementary Appropriation Bill passed second reading at the House on Wednesday.
The Majority Leader, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, who led debate on the general principles of the supplementary budget, urged lawmakers to approve the money bill due to the nature of the issues for which it was meant to address.
Ado-Doguwa prayed the House to approve a total sum of N895.84bn, of which N173.45bn is for recurrent non–debt expenditure, while the sum of N722.4bn is for contribution to the Development Fund for Capital Expenditure for the year ending December 31, 2021.
Following a unanimous passage for second reading, the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, referred the bill to the House Committee on Appropriations for further legislative action.
The cover letter on the bill presented to the National Assembly by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), had read in part, “The supplementary budget request is for a total sum of N895, 842, 465, 917.
“We propose to fund N45.63bn of the N83.56bn required for the COVID-19 vaccine programme by drawing on existing World Bank loans which will be structured as well as other grants totalling $113.2m.
“The balance of N37.93bn required for COVID-19 vaccines, salaries and other health-related expenditure totalling N41.6bn and N48.2bn recurrent components of defence and security will be funded by borrowing N135bn from some special reserve levy accounts.
“We propose to fund the balance of N722.4bn for capital expenditure on defence and security and capital supplementation from new borr
Meanwhile, the House has also approved N329.96bn to finance the 2021 budget of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
The House had on Wednesday received, considered and adopted the report by the committees on Federal Capital Territory and FCT Area Councils and Ancillary Matters on the 2021 budget of the Federal Capital Territory Administration.
Chairman of the committee, Abdullahi Garba, laid the report that was considered by the Committee on Supply and adopted by the House.
Garba had prayed the House to approve the budget with a total sum of N329.96bn, of which the sum of N74.32bn was for personnel costs; and the sum of N58.73bn was for overhead costs, while the balance of N196.91bn was for capital projects for the service of the FCT, Abuja, for the financial year ending on December 31, 2021.
