The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), will sign the 2023 appropriation bill on Tuesday, January 3, 2023.
Senate President Ahmed Lawan revealed this to journalists on Friday after a closed-door meeting with Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The Senate President who arrived at the Villa minutes before 3:00 pm said he discussed Buhari’s recent additional loan request, the legislature’s support to the Independent National Electoral Commission ahead of the general elections, the 2023 appropriate bill and other national matters.
He said, “We are looking forward to Mr President signing the Appropriation Bill 2023, by the grace of God, on Tuesday.
“This because we signed the documents yesterday, having lost some time because of some anomalous figures we had in the bill presented to the National Assembly.
“But thank God, the National Assembly, in both chambers, has passed the Appropriation Bill 2023 on Wednesday, and I’m sure that Mr. President and his team, on the executive side will work on what we have done. And the first thing on Tuesday, the first official working day of the year, I believe that Mr. President will be signing the Appropriation Bill 2023.”
He lamented that the National Assembly would have passed the bill a week earlier had it not been for irregularities spotted in the bill.
Explaining the delay, Lawan, said, “This year (delay) particularly, is because of the anomalous, very undesirable and unfortunate situation that we had to delay a little bit.”
He revealed that the Independent National Electoral Commission, “lacks nothing” and the National Assembly will support it to deliver credible elections.
Meanwhile, Senator Ali Ndume’s while reacting to the passage of the Budget on Channels TV Politics Today on Friday, said the Senate had been able to sustain the January to December budget circle.
He also said the 2022 supplementary budget presented by the President should have been included in the 2023 budget.
Ndume said, “I think my position is very clear now to Nigerians. We kept our agreement on our part and that is returning Nigeria into the budget circle of January to December, but we just passed an extension of the time to implement the budget.
“That means the budget will be implemented in 15 months instead of 12 months. You passed the budget timely but the implementation is delayed. We had to now extend the budget by 90 days. We also had to pass a supplementary budget and that is another issue that I have a problem with.”
