Food for the gods! Presidency, others to spend N517.9m on meals in 2015

The Federal Government is proposing to spend  N517.9m this year on meals and refreshments for the Presidency, the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, ministries of power and petroleum as well as their parastatals.

The amount is contained in the details of the 2015 budget breakdown, which was obtained by Punch correspondents in Abuja on Sunday.

Out of the N517.9m, a provision of N174.54m was made for refreshments and meals for the State House in 2015.

For the office of the President, the budget breakdown revealed that a provision of N142.47m was made for 2015 for refreshments and meals.

For the Vice-President, a provision of   N25.58m was made for meals and refreshments. However, while the State House Headquarters, Office of the President and the Vice President all have a combined budgetary provision of N342.59m for refreshments and meals, the 10 agencies under the presidency had a provision of just N67.4m for the same items.

They are the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Millennium Development Goals which has a provision of N8.49m; the Bureau for Public Enterprises, N14.72m; the National Emergency Management Agency,N14m; and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission N20m.

Others are the Bureau of Public Procurement, N5.52m; the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, N3.81m; and the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser to the President, N838,758.

Source: Punch