Last week, President Bola Tinubu requested the addition of N6.2 trillion to the budget through a bill to amend the 2024 Appropriations Act.

The House of Representatives has passed the N6.2 trillion additional spending in the 2024 budget.

President Bola Tinubu requested the addition of N6.2 trillion to the budget through a bill to amend the 2024 Appropriations Act.

This brings the entire budget to an aggregate expenditure of N35.05 trillion, with recurrent expenditure to gulp N11.2 trillion, N13.7 trillion as capital expenditure, and N8.2 trillion allocated for debt servicing.

The passage of the bill followed the consideration of a report submitted by the committee chairman, Abubakar Bichi, during plenary on Tuesday.

The bill scaled second reading last week and was referred to the House Committee on Appropriations for further legislative action.

Speaking on the budget proposal, Mr Bichi said the main source of financing the proposed expansion is the foreign exchange gains from banks, which amount to N6.2 trillion.

He added that the N3 trillion addition to the recurrent component of the budget is towards the new minimum wage bill before the National Assembly.

A breakdown of the budget shows that the executive earmarked N700 billion for the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, N250 billion for the Badagry-Sokoto Highway, N200 billion for the African Trans-Sahara Highway, and N348 billion for water and irrigation projects.

Some of the other projects include the compressed natural gas infrastructure projects with an allocation of N210 billion and the livestock development programme with a N75 billion allocation.

Following the presentation of the report's synopsis by Mr Bichi, it was subjected to clause-by-clause consideration by the committee of supply and passed.