The Senator representing Ogun West District in the National Assembly, Solomon Adeola Olamilekan, is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation. In this interview, he speaks on the 2025 budget passed recently by the National Assembly and what to expect about the 2026 appropriation bill. Excerpts:
Please give us an overview on the work your committee did on the 2025 budget proposal sent by President Bola Tinubu to the National Assembly?
Well, today (Thursday, February 13, 2025), we passed into law an Appropriation Bill of N54.99 trillion. As you are aware, the president laid a budget of N49.7 trillion before us precisely on the 18th day of December 2024 and on the 19th, the bill was committed to my committee to carry out further legislative action and that action comes with a lot of findings, a lot of issues that corroborated into the eventual passage and addition of new figures that was as a result of one, increase in revenue.
As you are aware, the Committee on Finance in conjunction with the Appropriation Committee carried out an investigative hearing that led to discovery of more revenues after due consultation with relevant revenue generating agencies and agencies that are affected include one, the Nigeria Customs Services; two, the Federal Inland Revenue Service and three, the Government-Owned Enterprises and all put together resulted in the N4.5 additional trillion and that fund has since been allocated by the executive accordingly with N1.5 trillion going to Bank of Agriculture, with N500 billion going to Bank of Industry, with N1 trillion going to Ministry of Solid Mineral Resources and the remaining N1.5 trillion going to the renewable infrastructure fund which was broken down as follows: N300 billion going to works, N400 billion going to rail and road transportation, also N380 billion going to water resources through the reticulation of basins and dams and distilling of basins and dams so that we can have farming throughout the years without necessarily waiting for both the dry or the rainy season.
The president believes that if we can put our dams and basins in proper shape, we can farm throughout the year and that was what necessitated the action of the executive of providing the sum of N380 billion.
Also, the renovation of our military barracks, the sum of N250 billion which eventually has some of N150 being allocated to that, while the military aviation that is a new aviation that is about to be set up, the sum of N120 billion was made available while a sum of N50 billion was given to agencies that is supervising the border community.
That is the breakdown of the N4.5 trillion revenue that was sourced along the line and also the president, in his usual tradition, took proactive steps to address the issue of suspension of the United States Aid Agency (USAID).
As you are all aware, the government of Donald Trump recently suspended any further action of this particular donor agency which primarily deals with donation to the health sector. And by that similar action, that shows that patients, especially in Nigeria, who are beneficiary of these donor agencies, who are suffering from tuberculosis, from HIV, from polio, and also malaria, which donor agencies have been giving out all these drugs and everything, there will be no supplies.
So in his proactive step, the president made available the sum of $200 million, which equivalents to around N300 billion for this particular purpose, so that we can take care of that because countries like Uganda and other African nations who solely depend on these aid agencies that have been suspended, are now suffering from these actions of President Donald Trump.
And aside that, other agencies of the government, including the INEC, the EFCC, the NFIU, the DGSS, the SSS, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the NJC, and other important agencies of the government that came up with genuine arguments for additional funding, were duly considered. All these and more are what were done in the current budget that was passed.
And if you also observe that this year, there is a quantum leap in the capital expenditure. There was focus on the area of more road constructions and also the area of major infrastructure is of main concern to the present administration in the area of schools, roads, and all other infrastructural deficit that the country is currently witnessing.
I want to thank the National Assembly, the House of Reps, and the Senate, who also worked very closely with the executive to ensure that more funds are deployed to what will lead to dividends of democracy compared to the cost of running the government.
So I want to congratulate us and we can only say that we can only improve on whatever we do because a total sum of the budget of N54.9 trillion was passed and about N23.7 trillion was for capital expenditure which is a quantum leap from where we are coming from.
Will we still maintain the December-January budget cycle now that the 2025 budget passage has disrupted that timing?
If you listened to my presentation on the floor of the Senate, that observation was raised and it was also part of the recommendation of the committee.
We want to blame what happened last year as a result of change in leadership because we now have a new DG Budget who’s still observing the system and the process of how to go about this and also don’t forget that 2024 was a little bit of turbulence.
We have the tax bill which was going back and forth before we noticed, we observed that we were still waiting for the Appropriation Bill to come so we had to work around the clock but I can assure you this time around, it is going to be different. The budget for 2026, the preparation will start as early as July of this year where the medium-term expenditure framework will be worked upon and be sent to the National Assembly so that we can work on it and pass it into law then we can expect latest by October, the Appropriation Bill for 2026.
So, we are working closely with the DG Budget, the Minister of Budget and the Coordinating Minister of the Economy to ensure that we return back to our January to December cycle.
“The budget for 2026, the preparation will start as early as July of this year where the medium-term expenditure framework will be worked upon and be sent to the National Assembly so that we can work on it and pass it into law then we can expect latest by October, the Appropriation Bill for 2026”
Apart from the N4.5 trillion additional budget that the president brought, did the committee make any additional increase in the budget?
The committee added the sum of N750 billion and I said earlier that even to procure all the vaccine all the drugs for the tuberculosis, for the HIV, for the malaria and so forth, the sum of $200 million which is the equivalent amount of almost N300 billion was provided for these particular items alone and also contained in that amount are other items that relate to the health sector which we are trying to set up like the blood bank.
We want to improve on that. We also made provision for items such as the National Hospital to undergo a comprehensive reconstruction and renovation so that we can bring it to the standard of the kind of status the national hospital should be.
We discussed with the executive arm on other details contained in the bill, for us to provide for items such as those that affect the health sector – salaries overhead and capital in about four or five agencies in the Ministry of Health and all others, there was need for us to make sure we bring the revenue to take care of the expenditure already recognised in those documents. So, basically these are the items that led to the increase.
As raised earlier on the floor of the Senate by Sen. Victor Umeh, the South East rail corridor has been without any allocation. Why was it not captured, considering that the region is populated by persons who are into commerce?
I’ve been very careful because if you observe, I refused to make any comment regarding the allegation filed by Senator Umeh. I want to study the situation very well before coming out with a pronouncement because I know that there are various sources of funding for every project.
For instance, the rail project you mentioned cannot only be financed by the Federal Government. It is like a joint partner’s kind of transaction where the Federal Government will provide some funds while the other counterpart will provide the remaining fund.
So I want to know what the real position is before any pronouncement is made as chairman of appropriation. I have to be careful. I want to actually know what is really happening; has that contract been awarded or was it as a result of funding? Which contractor is handling this project if it has been awarded, and why have they not been working on that particular corridor? So all of this I need to find out before coming up with any kind of pronouncement.
That will be so fundamental because coming from me as chairman appropriation will show clearly that maybe this allegation was true or not. I should be able to come up with the actual position of things as far as that particular item of transaction is concerned. So I don’t want to go into any detail, but I know the provision for this year’s transportation that is in the budget for rail transport has to do with light rail, which is going to be for Lagos, Ogun, Kaduna and Kano. So these are the four areas that are being considered for this year’s appropriation budget provision.
Lastly, federal workers are yet to receive the N70, 000 minimum wage passed by the National Assembly. Can you explain why? Was it not captured in the budget?
This is news to me, you are saying the minimum wage is yet to be implemented because I know that adequate provisions were made in the budget to pay the minimum wage.
So it’s news to me and I want to believe that the N9.9 trillion that was set aside for personnel and other costs is meant for all of this because I am aware of what we passed last year and what the new bill was this year. So I know adequate provision has been made and I know the Federal Government, if there are arrears to be paid, definitely they will be paid.
