The Good Governance Movement, a civil society organization, has encouraged the President, Bola Tinubu to add the N500 billion that was removed from the previous supplemental budget for palliatives to the 2023 Supplementary Budget, which is now awaiting approval by the National Assembly.
The President had, on assumption of office, sought and got the approval of the National Assembly to use N500 billion from the 2022 Supplementary Budget as payments for palliatives to cushion the impact of the fuel subsidy removal.
At a news conference in Abuja on Thursday, the Coordinator of the CSO, Terhila James Lorguruum, said capturing the N500billion in the 2023 supplementary budget was necessary to make funds available for payment of contractors handling work on critical infrastructure destroyed by the 2022 floods.
Lorguruum noted that work on some of the roads and bridges awarded to indigenous contractors following the 2022 flood disaster, had been halted owing to lack of payment.