Subject to approval of the National Assembly, the federal government would be spending N8.074 trillion on five priority sectors for the government. The sectors are defence & security, education, health, infrastructure and social development & poverty reduction programmes. President Muhammadu Buhari recently presented the N20.5 trillion national budget to the lawmakers.
Defence & security sector has the highest vote of N2.74 trillion (13 per cent of the total budget). That amount includes recurrent and capital expenditure vote for the military, police, intelligence and paramilitary. Nigeria is facing much of insecurity challenges that has gravely disrupted production and pushed up prices of farm produce across the country.
From the N2.05 trillion (10 per cent of the budget) for education sector, paltry N470 billion is earmarked for tertiary education revitalisation and salary enhancement, indicating that government maybe heading for another showdown with university lecturers. N1.23 trillion is the amount provisioned for Federal Ministry of Education and its agencies (recurrent & capital expenditure) with the other amount voted for UBEC and TETFUND.
Health Sector N1.58 trillion or eight per cent of the proposed budget, while the government plans to spend N756 billion (four per cent) on social development and poverty reduction programmes of the present administration.
Curiously, only five per cent or less than N1 trillion of the entire budget is voted for building of infrastructure. In simple terms, the federal government is planning to spend a little fragment of the budget (N998.93 billion) through ministries of Works & Housing, Power, Transport, Water Resources, Aviation for provision of infrastructure that is largely in deficit across Nigeria.
2023 Budget: Defence, Education, Health Gulp N8.1trn, As FG Allocates 5% To Infrastructure
