By Emman Ovuakporie & Johnbosco Agbakwuru

ABUJA—The House of Representatives, yesterday, upped President Muhammadu Buhari’s virement request from N180 billion to N208 billion.

The House, considering its initial lackadaisical attitude towards President Buhari’s request for virement, listed the item as a motion in the name of the House Appropriation Committee chairman, Mustapha Bala Dawaki, APC, Kano, which was passed without a single debate for or against.

File: House of Reps.

It would be recalled that the House first received and read the document on October 25 and kept it in abeyance for weeks until after some interface between National leadership and the Presidency before it was presented and referred on November 16.

But in a surprised move, the House increased the virement from N180 billion as requested by President Buhari to N208,821,671,494 and passed it without debating the proposal and laying the report for consideration at the committee of the whole House.

House of Representatives

The breakdown of the passed version shows that recurrent for Public Service Wage Adjustment, PSWA, under Service Wide Vote would take the sum of N71,800,215,270. Contingency is to take N1.2 billion,   Margin for Increase in Cost (MIC) to take N2 billion,   Ministry of Interior Cadet Feeding in Police Academy, Wudil, Kano, to take N932.4 million.

Others under the same Service Wide Vote are Amnesty Programme, N35 billion; internal operations of the Armed Forces, N5,205,930,270 billion; Operation Lafiya Dole, N13,933,093,000 billion; NYSC, under Ministry of Sports and Youth Development, N19,792,018,400 billion and Foreign Missions, N16,349,647,078 billion.

The Augmentation of Meal Subsidy/Direct Teaching and Lab Cost under the Federal Ministry of Education will take N900 million, with a sub-total of N167,113, 304, 018 billion.

Under statutory transfer, the Public Complaints Commission will get N2.5 billion, bringing the Special Intervention (Recurrent) sub total to N169,613,304,018 billion, while under capital expenditure: the Nigerian Air Force, under the Ministry of Defence, will get N12, 708,367,476 billion.