The incumbent Governor of Bayelsa State and governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Douye Diri, has been declared the winner of the State governorship election held last Saturday.

The Returning Officer, Prof Faruq Kuta, who is also the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University Of Technology, Minna, announced Diri winner of the poll at the collation centre of the election on Monday.

Diri polled 175,196 to defeat his closest rival, Timipre Sylva of the All Progressives Congress, who garnered 110,108 votes while the Labour Party polled 905 votes.

The Senate has approved President Bola Tinubu’s 2023, N2.1 trillion supplementary budget for the 2023 fiscal year.

Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, hit the gavel announcing the approval after putting the report to a voice vote by Senators.

This was a sequel to the adoption and debate of the report of the Senate Committee on Appropriations during Thursday’s plenary.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Adeola Olamilekan, had laid the committee’s report which was adopted and debated before Akpabio put it to voice vote and Senators across party lines voted in favour.

Vanguard

… increase student loan from 5bn to 10bn

The House of Representatives. Thursday scrapped the budgetary allocation of the presidential yacht moving the proposed sum to student loans thereby increasing allocation for student loans to 10bn as against 5. 5bn.

The Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee Abubakar Bichi Abubakar made this known on Thursday while addressing newsmen. He said the need became necessary following low budgetary allocation for students.

The Committee also increased the budgetary allocation of the ministry of Defence from 476bn to 546bn following security concerns

Bichi also disclosed that the minimum wage for workers was considered and approved for onward transmission to the executive while promising proper legislative oversight to ensure 100 per cent implementation

The sum of 100bn was retained for FCT as requested by the minister of FCT Nyesom Wike

To this end, the House passed the sum of 2.177 trn.