How Tinubu’s Alleged N360bn ‘Offer’ To Reps Stopped Protest Against Budget Presentation

More facts are emerging why members of the House of Representatives dropped their planned protest during President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 2025 Budget presentation.

The magazine reported that President Tinubu presented the N47. 9 trillion Budget Proposal to the joint Session of the National Assembly on Thursday December 18, 2024 in Abuja, the nation’s capital.

According to Daily Nigeria, the lawmakers had planned to disrupt the presentation by protesting against the Tax Reform Bill sent to the NASS in August this year. The Bill has been described to be very controversial following the divisions it created among Nigerians.

The Newspaper claimed that many House of Reps members who were not happy with the controversial bill had plotted to disrupt the event, which could have embarrassed the president , but shelved the plan after all  the lawmakers were offered N1 billion each as Constituency Project. There are 360 lawmakers in the House of Representatives.

On their part, 109 senators in the Nigerian Senate were also believed to have been offered N2 billion each, which will be injected into the 2025 Budget, sources informed the online newspaper, saying the action was made to placate them, so that the Budget Presentation could go without any incident.

The deal was reached after an emergency meeting with the House leadership, the report claimed, adding that the lawmakers agreed to shelve their plans following the huge sums offered to placate them,

“Plans have been concluded to heckle “no to tax bills” during President Tinubu’s budget presentation speech, but the lawmakers were quickly invited to a meeting with the House leadership at 9:30am on Wednesday,”  a top source familiar with the detail of the proceedings of the meeting revealed.

“During the meeting, they appealed to members to respect the sanctity of the hallowed chambers and the existing cordial relationship with the Executive, to shelve their plans to disrupt President Tinubu’s speech.

“They therefore announced that the president had graciously increased the constituency allowance to N1billion per member.”

The magazine reported that President Tinubu increased the Budget to N49.7 trillion from the N47.9 trillion initially proposed, an act sources said was done to placate some ‘major stakeholders’ in the government, particularly the National Assembly.