By Itam Offor
The Cross River State House of Assembly on Tuesday, passed N642,160,260,164.66 as the State’s 2025 Supplementary Budget.
Recall that the Assembly had passed the 2025 Appropriation Law on the 24th December 2024 with an approved budget size of N538,523,915,716.00 tagged “Budget of Sustainable Growth”.
The supplementary budget therefore shows a variance of N142.031,303,572.79 or 26% increase over the originally approved budget.
The Lawmakers stated that the approval of the supplementary budget was necessitated by Governor Bassey Otu’s commitment to infrastructural development of the 18 Local Government Areas of the State.
Chairman of the Assembly’s Finance and Appropriation Committee, Hon Okon Nyong Owuna who presented the report of his committee, stated that, the supplementary budget became necessary to accommodate several critical expenditure that were not originally captured in the 2025 budget.
Owuna said, “the key factors necessitating the supplementary budget include, new obligations and emergency spending not captured in the original budget, recently approved strategic programmes requiring immediate financial backing and improved outlook from Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), internal grants and allocations from FAAC.
He said, “These developments have provided the fiscal space to introduce additional expenditure across critical sectors”.
The Lawmaker informed that the supplementary budget introduced an upward adjustment across sectors like, Administration, Economic, Law and Justice, Regional and Social adding that, the budget will be financed from IGR, Aids and Grants and Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC).
Owuna also commended the State Government for adhering to the Constitution,
” It is with great joy that we observed that the Senator Bassey Edet Otu led administration has brought us to the landscape of passing a supplementary budget as contemplated by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as altered). In the past the House was faced with the downward review of each year’s budget resulting in amendment of the Appropriation Law instead of passing a Supplementary Appropriation Law”.
In his reaction, the Speaker of the Assembly, Rt Hon Elvert Ayambem reiterated that the supplementary budget is for the welfare of citizens adding that projects in all the Local Government Areas have been duly captured with a view to transforming the State.