According to the Senate Committee on Finance, the National Assembly’s 2022 budget does not include a provision for a monthly N5000 transit subsidy to 40 million poor Nigerians.
Remember that the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, stated that the federal government intends to phase out the fuel subsidy by the middle of next year, and that the transportation allowance was created to mitigate the potential negative impact on Nigerians who are most vulnerable.
Nevertheless, Adeola Olamilekan Solomon, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, said the 2022 budget proposal includes a gasoline subsidy but no provision for the proposed N5000 transport grant, which would cost N2.4 trillion yearly.
Senator Adeola Olamilekan Solomon, the committee’s chairman, announced this to reporters after presenting his panel’s report on the 2022 budget to the Appropriations Committee. Before the administration could intervene, he said, a proposal to that effect would have to be submitted to the National Assembly for approval.
“The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning was quoted to have said that 40 million Nigerians would be paid N5000 as transportation allowance in lieu of the fuel subsidy.
I don’t want to go into details for now. I believe that if such proposal is to come to pass, a document to that effect must be sent to National Assembly for us to see how possible it is and how do we identify the 40 million Nigerians that are going to benefit.
There are still a lot of issues to be deliberated upon and looked into if eventually this will come to pass. How do we raise this money to pay these 40 million Nigerians because I know that even the federal government revenues are from this so-called oil and other sources.
We don’t have anywhere in the budget where 40 million Nigerians will collect N5000 monthly as transportation allowance totaling N2.4 trillion.
I know that there must be a budgetary provison for this for us (National Assembly) to consider. That is why I said it is still a news out there until it is formally sent to the National Assembly for either a virement to the budget or reordering of the budget.”
