Senate Approves Tinubu’s N500bn Request To Cushion Subsidy Removal

Just like the House of Representatives, Senate has okayed a request by President Bola Tinubu to appropriate N500 billion for palliatives to cushion the effects of the removal of the petrol subsidy on Nigerians.

Gatekeepers News reports that the Senate’s approval came on Thursday hours after the house of representatives agreed to the request.

The upper legislative chamber granted the request after amending the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Act.

The money was to be extracted from the N819 billion Supplementary Appropriation Act, 2022.

One of the motions moved by the majority leader, Opeyemi Bamidele who sponsored the motion was to suspend relevant standing rules of the senate to enable the red chamber to give accelerated approval to the request.

The higher chamber, while considering clauses of the bill in the “committee of the whole,” approved N185 billion for the federal ministry of works “to alleviate the impact of the flooding experienced in 2022 on road infrastructure across the six geo-political zones.”

The Senate further approved N35 billion for the National Judicial Council (NJC), and N19.2 billion for the federal ministry of agriculture to “ameliorate the massive destruction to farmlands across the country during the severe flooding” in 2022.

The red chamber also approved N10 billion for the federal capital territory administration (FCTA) for “critical projects”.