2023 supplementary budget: FG slashes wage award allocation by N100 billion

The Federal Government has slashed the supplementary budgetary allocation for wage awards to federal civil servants by N100 billion.

This is according to the approved supplementary budget for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) seen by Nairametrics.

In the proposed document, the wage award for four months was to cost the federal government around N210 billion.

However, the approved document showed that it will now cost the Federal Government about N110 billion.

Ministry of Defence get N69.67 billion extra
The Ministry of Defence is a major beneficiary of the deduction from the wage award, with an additional allocation of N69.67 billion.

The allocation for the ministry rose from N476.54 billion to 546.21 billion.

Under the ministry, the Nigerian Navy, which was earlier caught up in the controversial N5.095 billion for the purchase of a Presidential yacht, got an additional N25 billion to its total allocation.

Its total allocation rose from N62.8 billion in the proposed supplementary budget to N87.8 billion in the approved document.

Nairametrics also observed that the presidential yacht was replaced by the purchase of a self-propelled barge (erroneously spent as a badge in the document).

Self-propelled barges are cargo-carrying vessels specifically engineered for operation on inland waterways.

The Nigerian Navy also got extra allocation for the construction of two buildings in Enugu and Ebonyi worth N3 billion each.

N19 billion was also allocated for the purchase of two tugboats, which are used to pull or push other large ships for manoeuvring or salvage purposes.

The Defence Intelligence Agency also got an extra N30 billion to its total allocation, from N17.04 billion in the proposed document to N47.04 billion in the approved copy.

More Insight

As a precaution to prevent a statewide protest that was being planned by organised labour unions across the country, President Bola Tinubu declared during his Independence Day speech that “low-grade workers” in the federal civil service would be awarded a wage of N25,000.

The amount was then increased to N35,000 following discussions with organised labour organisations.

To help the most disadvantaged Nigerians cope with the fuel subsidy cut and record-high inflation, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation launched a number of programmes.

A three-month conditional cash transfer programme was introduced by the ministry in October with the goal of transferring N25,000 to 15 million households.

It is still unknown why the Federal Government decided to slash the allocation of wage awards for federal workers, who have been hard hit by the fuel subsidy removal and other policies of the current administration.