TheCable

President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday signed the 2021 supplementary appropriation bill of N983 billion into law.

Umar El-yakub, senior special assistant to the president on national assembly (house of representatives), announced this while briefing state house correspondents after the signing.

He said a total sum of the supplementary budget assented to is N982,729,695,343, noting that the supplementary budget will be largely focused on funding security and health concerns.

The assent by the president is coming a month after the federal executive council approved the supplementary budget for the year 2021.

Zainab Ahmed, minister of finance, budget and national planning, had said the budget contains an aggregate sum N770.60 billion to further enhance the capacity of the defense and the security agencies to address current and emerging security challenges in our country.

Ahmed said a total of N83.56 billion expenditure is set aside in the budget for COVID-19 vaccine programme, covering 30 million vaccines from Johnson and Johnson and the logistics costs related to the deployment of the vaccines.

The budget also has N40 billion provision to take care of the needs for allowances to the health, education sectors, and other wage-related issues.

Ahmed had added that the supplementary also had N1.69 billion for the Nigeria Comprehensive AIDS programme.