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By Raphael Ekpang
Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, the Senate Committee chairman on Appropriation, has assured that president Bola Ahmed Tinubu will sign the 2024 Budget before Monday, January 1, 2024.
He gave the assurance on Saturday while briefing newsmen in National Assembly shortly after the Senate the 2024 appropriation bill.
He said, though we are barely left with one day before the end of the year which is Sunday, but insisted that there is no law that prevented Tinubu from signing budget on Sunday.
He noted that before they came out with the budget that was passed by the two Chambers on Saturday, they worked hard and subjected it through a thorough process devoid of doubt
According to him, “I can assure you the budget would be sign on Sunday before January 1, 2024 by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. No law that says the budget cannot be sign on Sunday.
“We took our time to work on this document that was passed by both chambers on Saturday. We worked harmoniously with the executive, the Minister of budget and national planning was with us all through
Meanwhile, Sen. Adeola while presenting the report, recommended that N1.7 trillion be approved for Statutory Transfers and N8 2 trillion be approved for Debt service.
The committee chairman also recommended that N8.7 trillion be approved as recurrent (non-debt) expenditure and N9.9 trillion be approved as capital expenditure.
The lawmaker explained that the increase in the appropriation was as a result of a request for additional funding of items which were not listed in the Appropriation Bill as submitted by President Tinubu.
The Senate President said that National Assembly Committee on Appropriation observed inadequate funding in the budgetary allocations of some Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the federal government
Breakdown
Breakdown of the Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly indicates that N1, 742,786, 788,150 is for statutory transfers; N8, 270, 960,606,831, debt servicing; N8, 768, 513, 380, 852,
recurrent (non debt) expenditure and N 9,995, 143,298,028 as contribution to development fund for capital expenditure.
For statutory transfers, the National Judicial Council got the sum of N341,625,739,236 Niger-Delta Development Commission N338,924,732,832, 28
Universal Basic Education Commission
N263,043,551,250, 29 ;Senate
N 49,144,916,519 ; House of Representatives, N78,624,487,169.
For the Presidency N97,913,321,898, 40
and N82,922,332,768 , 163 recurrent and capital respectively.
Also, the Ministry of Defence got
N1,308,493,771,066, 41 as recurrent and N339,286,557,299 for capital; Ministry of Works got N39,374,777,404, 68 and N892,461,262,656 191 for recurrent and capital expenditure respectively.
Similarly, Ministry of Education got N857,134,132,339, 80 for recurrent and
N417,579,107,875, 203 for capital.
