The House of Representatives has passed the 2014 Appropriation bill, approving the sum of N4.695 trillion for the 2014 fiscal year like its Senate counterpart.
Just like the upper chamber also, there is a N53.5 billion increment to the N4.642 billion proposed by the executive.
Before the House dissolved into the committee of Supply, a lawmaker, Kingsley Chinda (PDP, Rivers) attempted to stop the passage of the budget citing Order 97, rule 8, but failed. During the clause by clause consideration, Tambuwal, while responding to a point of order raised by Bukar Goni (PDP, Yobe) that the allocation of N2 billion for the Federal Initiative for North East is insufficient, assured the House that President Goodluck Jonathan had assured the leadership of the National Assembly during a meeting on Wednesday night that more funding would go to the project since this is just counterpart funding.
"The president explained that this is just counterpart funding and that they are engaging international agencies. This is for a pool to be harnessed. This is just seed money," he stated.
The Judiciary, INEC and Works are also among the agencies under consideration for increased funding, the speaker added. From the sum, N408,687,801,891 is for statutory transfers, N712 billion is for debt service, N2,454,887,566,702 is for recurrent while N1,119,614,407 is for contribution to the development fund for capital expenditure.