The National Assembly has postponed the passage of the 2023 budget till next week due to ‘problems’ discovered in the budget.
The Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, announced this at the start of the plenary on Thursday.
He said the lawmakers cannot pass the budget because it “came with some problems” that were discovered by the National Assembly Committees on Appropriations.
In October, President Muhammadu Buhari presented a sum of N20.5 trillion as the budget estimate for the 2023 fiscal year to a joint session of the national assembly.
In the same month, both chambers of the assembly passed the proposal for a second reading.
Lawan said the senate and house of representatives committees on appropriations have since begun cleaning up the document.
“The Appropriations Bill came to the National Assembly with some problems and when our Committees on Appropriations in the Senate and House of Representatives started to reconcile the figures of what has been done and what was presented.
“The problems became obvious and not easy to deal with and the Committees had to start a process of cleaning up the bill. That process engaged the Executive because the problem came from them. They (committees) only concluded that yesterday,” he explained.
Mr Lawan did not provide details of the kind of “problems” discovered in the budget.
He simply informed his colleagues that the committee secretariat was not able to finish processing the report. And that they cannot present it “today or tomorrow…nor Monday and Tuesday because of a public holiday.”
“Consequently, we can only receive and consider the report on Wednesday 28, next week,” he said.
