Senate President Ahmad Lawan says the national assembly is
unable to pass the 2023 appropriation bill because of some “obvious problems”
in the document.
Lawan said this on the floor of the senate on Thursday.
In October, President Muhammadu Buhari presented a sum of
N20.5 trillion as the budget estimate for the 2023 fiscal year to a joint
session of the national assembly.
In the same month, both chambers of the assembly passed the
proposal for a second reading.
Lawan said the senate and House of Representatives
committees on appropriations have since begun cleaning up the document.
“We are not able to receive the report of the committee
(appropriations),” he said.
“The main reason for this is that the appropriations bill
came to the national assembly with some problems and when our committees on
appropriations of the senate and the house started to reconcile the figures and
what was presented, the problems became very obvious.
“Therefore, our
committees had to start the process of cleaning up the bill first. That
process, of course, also engaged the executive arm – because the bill came from
there – and that was concluded yesterday.
“Our secretariat of our committees is not able to process
the budget for us either today or tomorrow, not Saturday nor Sunday.”
The senate president said the national assembly would likely
consider and pass the budget after the Christmas holidays next week.
BUDGET BREAKDOWN
In the 2023 budget proposed by the executive, N744,109,
468,797 was earmarked for statutory transfers while N6,557,597,611,797 was
fixed for debt service.
The sum of N8,271,882,354,405 was put aside for recurrent
(non-debt) expenditure while N4,934,352,745,705 was fixed for capital
expenditure.
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