Presidency’ll get passed 2017 budget ‘any moment from now’ – Senate

The Senate, on Tuesday, said the 2017 Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly will be transmitted to the Presidency for assent latest by Wednesday.


The Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, on Tuesday, said the National Assembly delayed transmission of the bill as the document was still undergoing legislative processes after it was passed on Thursday.

The National Assembly had, on Thursday, passed the 2017 Appropriation Bill, with budget estimates totalling ₦7.441tn.

The passage followed the consideration and adoption of the report by the Senate and House of Representatives’ Committees on Appropriations on “a bill for an act to authorise the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation of the total sum of ₦7,441,175,486,758.”

After passing the budget on Thursday, the Senate had adjourned plenary for 10 minutes, resumed and adopted the votes and proceedings of the last session.

At the plenary on Tuesday, the Senate adopted the “Votes and Proceedings 2” of the last legislative day.

The Senate’s spokesman, however, explained that there were more legislative processes on the bill before it could transmitted to the Presidency.

Sabi-Abdullahi said, “We passed the budget last week Thursday. Let us get this very clear: after a budget is passed, the appropriation committee must do authentication. The authentication means that it is not any document that should fly around; there must be something that will show that this is the main budget that we passed. If you are familiar with our procedures, you will see that the budget always carries some signatures.”