President Muhammadu Buhari will present the 2023 appropriation Bill to the National Assembly in October, Femi Gbajabiamila, Nigeria’s Speaker of the House of Representatives, has said.
It will be Buhari’s last as Nigeria’s leader because he’s due to exit office next year after spending the mandatory eight years as President and Commander-in-Chief.
There are divergent views on whether the previous budgets passed by the administration have changed the lives of many Nigerians.
The complaint mainly is that a large portion of the budget had been used to fund recurrent expenditures rather than capital projects which have direct impacts on the lives of many Nigerians.
There are also complaints about the timely signing of the Budget by the president after it has been passed by the national assembly.
The consequence of all of these, many say, is that Nigerian’s don’t usually get much from the budget after serious efforts have been put into it by the executive arm of government and NASS. .
For instance, the 2022 Budget was signed by President Buhari after a long delay from the executive which alleged that the NASS has padded the monetary estimates.
Speaking On Wednesday during the inspection of the ongoing renovation work on the green chamber, as well as the construction of the National Assembly Service Commission office, Gbajabiamila said the president will present the proposed N19.76 trillion budget for the 2023 financial year in the first week of October to a joint session of the National Assembly.
The Speaker said the chamber is being renovated for the comfort of the lawmakers in preparation for the president’s arrival next month.
Gbajabiamila said, “You see that the old chamber has been ripped apart. The innovations are going to be like state of the art. We will at the end of the day be proud to have the chamber that match the best standard all over the world.
“I’m quite impressed with the work so far. I will encourage them to double the pace. Because as it is, unfortunately or fortunately, this is not for the benefit of the 9th Assembly, it is for the benefit of the 10th Assembly.
“The old chamber is not going to be ready until sometime in August 2023 so we are talking about close to year. But so far so good, we are happy and this temporary site where we will be sitting for the next nine, 10 months is honestly a far cry from where we used to be but they have done well in adapting. This used to be hearing room to a legislative chamber. Adaptation – you made a lot of innovations. We are ready to work.
“The 10th Assembly is most likely (taking off here) unless work can be accelerated but we don’t want to accelerate work and compromise quality of work. So is better late but done well, everything worth doing is worth doing well.”
