President Bola Tinubu will deliver budget speech and present proposal for fiscal year 2024 to the National Assembly next month while also submitting the 2023 supplementary budget for consideration.
Team@orientactualmags.com learned that Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Solomon Adeola, who made this known during the inaugural meeting of the committee, added that the National Assembly would ensure that the 2024 budget is passed before December 31, 2024.
‘I know we have it on good authority that the supplementary budget would be sent by the Executive in the next couple of hours to the National Assembly.
Also in about a week or two weeks later, the President will be presenting the 2024 Appropriation bill to the National Assembly and as a result of this I find it very important to call for an inaugural meeting so that we can know ourselves’ he said.
‘I want you to take cognizance of the change of government on May 29.
There is a teething problem because there is a change of government. The new administration has a new mantra that encapsulates its vision and there must be challenges’ Adeola added while explaining what caused the delay in presenting the supplementary budget and the one for the fiscal year 2024.
The senator has however, promised that notwithstanding the late submission of the 2024 budget, the senate would do a thorough job.
‘We will do a thorough job on the budget. Our job is to verify the budget to meet the expectations of the people. We will look into it thoroughly.
We are expecting the MTEF next week and immediately we receive the document, the Committee on Finance will go into work and look into it.
The Finance Minister and the Minister of Budget and Planning are working round the clock.
I assure you that we won’t break the tradition, we will have the budget as at when due. We will keep to the tradition of the January to December budget cycle’ he added.
Adeola also submitted that he does not believe that budget padding exists.
‘A budget has to do with the nomination of projects to the budget document that will meet the yearnings and the needs of the people, I would not regard such a thing as padding.
It is still part of a government document, we will look into and it has an expectation. The budget has an estimate but implementation is another thing.
So, I don’t believe in budget padding, it never exists in my dictionary’ he added.
Senator Adeola also assured that the National Assembly will not allow a budget that is inflated by the cost of governance as against driving infrastructure.
‘The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Finance minister, Wale Edun, and his colleague , the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Atiku Bagudu will appear before this committee to brief us on the action plan on the economy, the budgeting process and how the National Assembly and the executive will be working together in the next couple of years.
Also, it would not be business as usual, we won’t support a government where 72% of the budget will be spent on the cost of running the government and only 28 percent will now be spent on driving the infrastructure.
We will rather prefer a budget that 55 to 60% is spent on driving infrastructure to the people and 40% is spent on the budget’ he submitted- Team@orientactualmags.com Do you have any information you wish to share with us? Do you want us to cover your event or programme? Kindly send SMS to 08059100286, 09094171980. Thank you
