By Haruna Salami
The Senate Committee on Appropriation has debunked insinuation in some quarters that President Bola Tinubu’s N27.5 trillion 2024 budget was an empty document.
The chairman of the Committee, Senator Solomon Olamilekan, who spoke to newsmen after their meeting on Saturday said those peddling such rumours are ignorant or lack what to say, insisting that the budget document is in tune with the yearnings of Nigerians.
Senator Olamilekan also debunked the insinuations that fire brigade approach was being employed by the executive arm of the government to prevent the lawmakers from doing a thorough job, saying “there is no fire brigade here”.
According to him, “there are processes which we have to follow. Agencies will have to appear to defend their budgets and they will return the budget to the Appropriations Committee for us to collate their findings at the committee level.
After the Saturday meeting, Olamilekan “we have only discussed the modalities that we are going to use to ensure we have a smooth appropriation process in the Senate and I think all the chairmen of the various committees of the Senate are here and we discussed extensively so that we can still meet the 31st December – January deadline so that the president can assent to the budget.
“We have perfected the strategy and we are good to go. That is basically what we discussed.
“This time around, what has changed is that we will be having joint sittings of both the House of Representatives and the Senate; some committees will be operating from the Senate while some will operate from the House of Representatives. We can still meet the deadline.
On some agencies not appearing, the chairman said “I know that part of the directive given by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is that all ministers at this point should ensure that they are on ground to defend their budgets before the National Assembly. I know, no head of agency or parastatal will flout that order of the president.
“We are working towards that. From next week you will see agencies coming to defend their budgets in the National Assembly.
On the limited time for deliberation whiCh will may not allow for a thorough job to be done Olamilekan said, whoever said that is not sincere.
“Like I said nothing has changed. Whatever you want to define to be thorough we still have the time to do and we have said the only thing that we have amended is this issue of joint sitting. So that we can cover some delays that we have encountered in the laying of the budget so we are working round the clock and our Saturdays and Sundays are no longer free until the budget is eventually passed
“You can see all the papers today, there are sectoral releases of what the president presented us. You know that the President Presentation is the first reading, second reading is the debate of the general principle of the bill as contained in the speech of tge President which we debated for two days and on Friday the budget was submitted to us and immediately we went to work and release all the sectoral releases which has been presented by the President to Nigerians.
“So that they will know which ministry gets what, what is going to each ministry and after that is the detail which we will work with for the agencies that will be appearing before us to defend their budget so the person that is saying that does not know what he is saying.”
It will be recalled that barely 48hours after President Bola Tinubu Presented the N27.5 trillion 2024 budget to the joint session of the national Assembly, the bill passed second reading at the Senate Friday despite some lapses.
The bill passed second reading during Friday’s plenary after lawmakers debated its general principles without having the breakdown of the estimates, including sectorial allocations.
The two chambers of the National Assembly are working for expeditious consideration of the budget at committee levels and final passage before Christmas for the president to assent to it to maintain the January-December budget circle as requested by Tinubu.
To achieve this task the Senate mandated its committee on Appropriations, to after collation of reports from various standing committees, submit final report on the budget to the Senate on Tuesday, December 19, 2023.
2024 budget
photo credit @Jidesanwoolu
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