The Nigerian Senate on Wednesday began consideration of the N180.4 billion virement request by President Muhammadu Buhari. Virement refers to the process of transferring items from one financial account to another.

During plenary, Senate President Bukola Saraki referred the request to its Committee on Appropriation and Finance to report back in one week.

In the House of Representatives, the request was referred to the Committee on Appropriations for further legislative action.

While the upper legislative Chamber, after consideration, the request was referred to a joint committee on Appropriation and Committee on Finance.

President Buhari had communicated his request for virement on funds to both chambers of the National Assembly on October 25.

According to his letter, the request was in respect of funds appropriated for special intervention to fund some critical recurrent and capital items.

He wrote: “The request was necessitated by a number of reasons, including shortfalls in the provision of personnel cost, inadequate provision for the amnesty programme, need to sustain war against insurgency and the depreciation of the naira.

“The request is also to provide for inadequacy in the provision for the National Youth Service Corps in the 2016 budget.”

Buhari explained that in the course of implementing the budget, MDAs presented issues pertaining to salary shortfalls, as it affected those that are not under the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).

The President described the areas for which the virement was sought as “Critical Expenditure Items”.

He also noted that budgeted revenues were running behind target largely due to the renewed violence in the Niger Delta without supplementary revenue sources.

Buhari explained that due to the shortfalls and the other challenges, “the total recurrent expenditure requirement is N166.63 billion while the capital expenditure is N14.208 billion.”

•Additional reports from NAN. Photo shows National Assembly Complex.

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