Subsidy removal: Reps approve Tinubu’s N500bn request for palliatives

The House of Representatives has approved the request of President Bola Tinubu for an amendment to the 2022 appropriation act.

The approval followed Tinubu’s request for N500 billion for palliatives to Nigerians in order to reduce the hardship caused by subsidy removal.

The amendment passed the first, second, and third readings during plenary on Wednesday.

However, the House on Thursday approved the President’s request after members of the House made contributions.

The president said he hoped the lawmakers will consider his request “expeditiously”.

The letter reads, “I write to the house of reps to approve the amendment of the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Act in accordance to the attached,” the letter reads.

“The request has become necessarily important to, among other things, source for funds necessary to provide palliative to mitigate the effect of the removal of fuel subsidy on Nigerians. “Thus, the sum of N500 billion only has been extracted from the 2022 Supplementary Act of N819,536,937,815 for the provision of palliative to cushion the effect of petrol subsidy removal.”

In December, the national assembly passed a supplementary budget of N819 billion for the 2022 fiscal year.

At the time, the legislature also extended the implementation of the 2022 budget till March 31, 2023.

In May 2023, the national assembly passed the amendment to the 2022 supplementary budget to extend the implementation of the capital components to December 2023.