Buhari meets NASS leadership over supplementary budget for security, COVID-19

Independent

By Innocent Oweh

ABUJA – President Muhammadu Buhari, on Monday, played host to the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and Speaker of the House of Representa­tives, Femi Gbajabiamila, at the Presidential Villa, Abu­ja, where they discussed the possibility of passing a sup­plementary budget for ad­ditional funds for COVID-19 vaccines.

The meeting, which was held behind closed doors, also deliberated on more funding for security agencies and for the military to continue its battle against insurgency and other terrorist activities.

Recall that following the devastating effects of COVID-19 around the world, both the U.S. and EU coun­tries have been economical with vaccines they developed, which has posed challenges for less endowed countries wishing to access the vac­cines.

The development is prompting the Nigerian gov­ernment to look inwards, hence a supplementary bud­get to back such expenses.

Ahmad, while fielding questions from State House correspondents, gave more insight into the meeting.

He said: “You know, this is one government where the legislature and executive are working together and we have come to meet with Mr. President to discuss issues of serious national concern. One of those issues is the supple­mentary budget.

“Both executive and leg­islative arms believe that we should have a supplementary budget to provide for funding of the COVID-19 vaccination in Nigeria, as well as securi­ty, providing more resources and platforms to our security agencies.

“Today, I am sure in Nige­ria, there are no more grave issues than COVID-19 and the security situation in the country.

“And I want to use this op­portunity to say that the secu­rity situation is gradually im­proving. I’m sure that when we will have more resources for our security agencies, we will see an even faster recov­ery of our situation.”

Commenting on the pro­duction of local vaccines, Lawan said he believed that our country, Nigeria, should have some resources for our scientists to collaborate with other scientists from across the globe to also have our own vaccine as, according to him, “we can’t rely on what other countries are doing now, ev­ery nation to itself, that’s what is happening”.

He alleged that the U.S. government was not allowing vaccines to go out of the U.S. Likewise the EU was not al­lowing AstraZeneca vaccines produced in the UK to be sent out of the EU.

India is not also allowing AstraZeneca vaccines they produced to be exported.

“So, where do we go from here? We will have to fall back on our own capacities and abilities.”

This news originally appeared on Independent.