NASS May Reconsider 2022 Budget After Recess -Lawan, Gbajabiamila

Following concerns raised by President Muhammadu Buhari about the appropriation bill he sent to the National Assembly for consideration, the lawmakers have suggested that the budget may be reconsidered.

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan spoke with State House Correspondents alongside the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Femi Gbajabiamila during the signing of the budget into law.

Buhari had signed the budget last day of 2021 after almost two weeks of passage but expressed concern over some major adjustments made to it by the national assembly.

Some key concerns the president raised were increase in projected federal government Independent Revenue by N400 billion without provision for it by the Executive.

The National Assembly also reduced the provision for Sinking Fund to Retire Maturing Bonds by N22 billion without any explanation and a further reduction of the provisions for the Non-Regular Allowances of the Nigerian Police Force and the Nigerian Navy by N15 billion and N5 billion respectively.

Responding to the President’s concerns, which were contained in a statement issued by his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Lawan 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.”

He said the observations by Mr President was a natural and logical tendency between the executive and the legislature, noting that there are differences in views sometimes among the arms of government on certain issues.

“So I don’t think what the President did, by raising some observations, is something we should worry about,” he assured.

He however expressed happiness that the President signed the budget in the first place with the promise to return to the National Assembly to seek amendments or virement.

According to Lawan, “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.”

On contributions to the Budget, Lawan said, “This is based on judgement 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 added that, “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.”

Addressing the President’s concerns, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, said since the House had gone on recess, there was no way they could consider those concerns.

He declared, “We are on vacation now. When we come back on January 18, we will know what’s next.

The House had passed the appropriation bill two Tuesdays ago and moved for recess, with Gbajabiamila noting that, “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.”

The two chambers had increased the budget spending by N735.8 billion from the proposed N16.391tn to N17.126 trillion.

They also raised the oil benchmark from $57 per barrel proposed by the executive to $62.

Key figures of the appropriation shows that there’s an aggregate expenditure of N17,126,873,917,692(N17.12trn) while debt servicing stands at. N3,879,952,981,550 (N3.87trn)

Recurrent expenditure stands at N6,909,849,788,737(N6.90trn) while the capital expenditure component stands at N5,467,403,959,863( N5.46trn).