N70bn NASS Infrastructure Not Part Of N500bn Palliative Funds — Deputy Speaker, Kalu

The deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Benjamin Kalu, has said the N70 billion National Assembly (NASS) Infrastructure was not to be drawn from the N500 billion approved for palliatives by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to cushion the effect of fuel subsidy removal.

Kalu gave this clarification when he led the principal officers of the House to meet journalists on the heels of the passage of a bill, amending the N819 billion 2022 supplementary budget to extract N500 billion for palliatives.

According to the components of the amended appropriation act, N500 billion was for palliatives and other capital expenditure to cushion the effect of recent subsidy removal policy and N185 billion for Ministry of Works and Housing to alleviate the impact of the severe flooding experienced in the country.

Others are N19 billion for Federal Ministry of Agriculture to ameliorate the massive destruction to farmlands across the country during the severe flooding experienced last year, N35 billion to National Judicial Council, N10 billion to Federal Capital Territory Administration for critical projects and N70 billion to National Assembly.

Kalu said, “What we did today was not just for the palliatives so that the narrative that will be out there will not be that we passed palliative bill to take care of the Judicial Commission, to take care of National Assembly.

“It is the National Assembly infrastructure that we are talking about when we mentioned component that has to do with National Assembly for infrastructure. But the major part of the whole bill we passed today was to help Nigerians who due to the removal of subsidy are feeling the impact.

“There are various components of that bill, that bill did not speak about one component. That bill which is about N819 billion was not only for palliatives and so the breakdown was not only for palliatives, discussion was not only about palliatives,” he said.