The Senate has received a request from President Muhammadu Buhari for the virement of funds from various budget lines to fund the Federal Government’s priority projects and programs.

The Senate sent the request to its committee on appropriations.

But some lawmakers opposed the virement request from the President noting that the request is too early especially as the Executive has only released 340 billion for capital expenditure in the 2017 budget.

However, the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, argued that virement is illegal as the constitution only recognizes appropriation and supplementary budgets as the financial instruments for requesting and spending money.

The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo had on July 20, 2017, written to the House of Representatives to request for a virement of 1365.6 billion Naira to some critical priority projects in the 2017 budget.

Prof. Osinbajo after signing the 2017 budget said that there was an agreement between the executive and the legislature that a request for virement can be sent later.

This he said was to make up for the decision of the lawmakers to slash allocation for some major projects.

These projects, according to him, include the railway standard gauge projects, the Mambilla Power Project, the Second Niger Bridge, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway etc. which they had reduced to fund some of the new projects they introduced.