Federal Government of Nigeria will spend a total of N3.3bn on former heads of the government and its ministries, departments, and agencies in 2023.
Gatekeepers News reports that this was contained in the 2023 Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly.
According to the Bill, severance benefits to retired heads of government agencies and parastatals will cost the country N1bn, while N2.3bn was allocated as the entitlements of former presidents/heads of state and vice presidents/Chief of General Staff.
The beneficiaries will include former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan; ex-military Heads of State, Ibrahim Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar, and Yakubu Gowon; former Vice-Presidents Atiku Abubakar and Namadi Sambo, among others.
The total estimates of the 2023 Appropriation Bill increased from the proposed N20,507,942,180,704 to N21,827,188,747,391, a difference of N1,319,246,566,687.
The 2023 budget is the eighth and the last to be presented by President Muhammadu Buhari; and the last to be passed by the 9th National Assembly.
On the other hand, the Federal Government proposed a total of N470bn for revitalisation of tertiary institutions and the upgrade of university lecturers’ salaries.
The National Assembly, however, passed only the N300bn budgeted for the institutions’ revitalisation, leaving out the N170bn proposed for upward salary review for university lecturers.
Buhari, in his address to a joint session of the National Assembly, while laying the budget on December 7, 2022, announced a N470bn intervention fund to end the protracted crisis between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities.
In the budget, the Nigerian Postal Service also got N10bn for restructuring and recapitalisation, while the sum of N1.92bn was allocated to ‘special intervention fund for construction of storage facility in Benin to house repatriated artefacts.’
Meanwhile, the National Assembly and its affiliated bodies will spend a total of N194,839,144,401, while the National Judicial Council, which manages the judicial arm of the Federal Government, has been allocated 165,000,000,000.
