Were Nigerians really surprised that the National Assembly jacked up Budget 2017 by over N143 billion as stated in a report of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations? Only a handful of Nigerians would be, if any. This is not the first time the National Assembly would so do; last year’s budget suffered a similar fate.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s original estimates, presented to a joint session of the Senate and the House on December 14, 2016, stood at N7.298 trillion. But the new figure reported by the House committee on Tuesday was N7.441trillion, a difference of over N143 billion.
The report was presented by Mustapha Bala-Dawaki, chairman of the committee, at the session, which was presided over by Yakubu Dogara, speaker, House of Representatives.
Copies of the report, which was not commented on, will be distributed to members for consideration and possible passage of the budget this week.
The highlights of the report showed that 434.412 billion will go to statutory transfers, while another 1.841 trillon is set aside for debt servicing.
The sum of 177.460 billion is recommended for “sinking fund for maturing bonds.” The recurrent expenditure captured in the new report is 2.990 trillion. Buhari’s initial proposal had recurrent expenditure of N2.98 trillion.
Whereas the capital component of the report stands at 2.174 trillion, Buhari had presented N2.24 trillion.
The report clarified that the new figure was  “exclusive of capital expenditure in  statutory  transfers,” details of which would be contained in the breakdown of the budget.
The National Assembly would benefit from the additional N143 billion, as it was said to have added N10 billion to its budget, bringing the total of its share from N115 billion to N125 billion.
The crude oil benchmark in the new report was raised to $44 per barrel, up from the initial $42.5 earlier sent to the legislature by the the President.
Bukola Saraki, Senate president, promised that the National Assembly will pass the 2017 Appropriation Bill on Thursday.