Following concerns raised by the President, Major General Muhammadu
Buhari (retd.), over the recently signed 2022 Appropriation Bill, Senate
President Ahmed Lawan has said the National Assembly was correct in its
judgment.
Lawan said this on Friday at the Presidential Villa shortly
after signing the budget.
Earlier, NigerianEye reported that Buhari expressed ‘strong
reservations on ‘‘worrisome changes’’ made by the National Assembly to the 2022
Executive Budget proposal.
Speaking to State House Correspondents, the Senate President
said, “I think the most important thing is that Mr President is happy with the
majority of what the National Assembly has done. That is the most critical
thing that we need to focus on.
“As for the observations Mr President has raised, this is a
natural and logical tendency between the executive and the legislature.
Sometimes, our views on certain issues may not be the executive’s view.
“So I don’t think what the President did, by raising some
observations, is something we should worry about. I’m happy that the President
signed the budget in the first place. And he said it’s going back to the
National Assembly to seek amendments or virement. This is a natural, logical
legislative process.
“I believe that the National Assembly was right in its
judgment, but there is nothing wrong in the executive arm of government coming
back to the National Assembly to see how we’re able to dialogue and go through
the process and see where the misunderstanding is. But I don’t think that is
supposed to be a worrisome development for us.”
Lawan further explained that government-owned enterprises
should contribute double the N500bn revenue reflected in the budget.
“This is based on judgments when we asked for more resources
coming from the independent sources, especially from the government-owned
enterprises of about N400bn to N500bn is because we believe that these
government-owned enterprises should contribute even much more. In fact, I hold
the opinion that they should have contributed about a trillion, at least not
N500bn or so.”
He also said that by signing the budget, the Federal
Government is setting an example for subnational governments.
“The driving force is our ability in the two chambers of the
National Assembly to work amicably and productively. And then, of course, our
ability as a National Assembly to work with the executive arm of government in
such a manner that the processing of the budget estimates is done so that both
arms participate fully at the appropriate time.
“The ability of the federal government to have this budget
passed and signed before the end of the year has made so many states also work
towards achieving that. And by today, you would have noticed that more than
half of our states would have signed the budget 2022. And that is the kind of
leadership that the federal government is giving to the sub nationals.”
On his part, the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
Femi Gbajabiamila, said the House will review the President’s concerns in
January.
“We are on vacation now. When we come back on January 18, we
will know what’s next,” he said.
Gbajabiamila said the early directive by the President for
all MDAs to begin working on the 2023 transition budget will ease operations
for the National Assembly.
According to him, “The transition budget Mr President spoke
about, as you heard him earlier, they are even going to bring it earlier in
2023, which gives us ample time, more time to work on it, improve on it, and
make it a seamless budget with seamless execution and implementation.
“I don’t think I have a problem with the 2023 budget. The
2023 budget is going to come, and we’re going to work on it just like we have
been working on the budgets.”
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