NASS Moves to Examine Buhari’s N180bn Request for NYSC, Amnesty

Ahead of the 2017 Budget proposal, the two chambers of the National Assembly on Wednesday debated on Wednesday at plenary, the Senate resolved to com­mence work on President Muhammadu Buhari’s re­quest to remove the sum of N180 billion from the 2016 Budget to fund the Amnesty Programme and the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme.
While the Senate direct­ed its Committees on Ap­propriation and Finance to do thorough legislative work on the request and submit its report next week, The House of Rep­resentatives also directed its Committee on Appro­priation to examine the request.

President Buhari had in October asked the Na­tional Assembly to ap­prove the virement of N180.839billion from the N500 billion appropriated for Special Intervention Programme to finance other key projects such as the Amnesty Programme, the NYSC and the Public Service.
According to the Presi­dent, the Amnesty Pro­gramme will receive N35 billion from the transfer.
Buhari’s request indi­cated that the total re­current expenditure re­quired to be transferred is N166.630,886billion while the capital expenditure requirement to be trans­ferred is N14.208billion.
A breakdown of the specific areas shows that N180.9 billion would be transferred to showed that Public Service Wage Adjustment takes the lion share of N71.8billion fol­lowed by the Amnesty Programme, N35bil­lion while the mobilisa­tion of corps members N19.792billion.
Others are Foreign Missions which gulped N14.667billion; Op­eration Lafiya Dole, N13.933billion; Nigerian Air Force, N12.708billion; Internal Operations of the Armed Forces, N5.205billion; Margin for Increase in Cost takes N2billion, while Presi­dential Initiative for the North East was allocated N1.5billion.
Also, contingency, sal­ary shortfall for Public Complaints Commis­sion got N1.2billion each even as Cadet Feeding of Police Academy, Kano augmentation of meal subsidy for unity colleges received N932million and N900million respectively.
Although, the Deputy Speaker, Hon Yussuff La­sun, who presided over the plenary, did not give room for debate on the motion, the committees responsible for the vire­ment, have been man­date to report back to the House for final consider­ation and approval.