One would have thought the short fall of budgeting procedure and system which held last year budget beyond normal period a yearly budget should be ready for approval will be better improve this year but obviously that wasn’t the case. The 2018 budget perhaps might break another delay record in Nigeria history as the President Muhammadu Buhari has yet to get a clean copy of the 2018 Appropriation Bill as passed into law by the two chambers of the National Assembly last week.
The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma, disclosed this to State House correspondents at the end of the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. The minister stated, “The President has yet to receive the budget. It is therefore impossible to make a statement about the budget that has not been received.
“Once we get it, we will work very quickly on it. When it is submitted, I am sure the National Assembly will inform Nigerians.”
The Senate at the plenary on Wednesday approved the Conference Committee’s report on the 2018 Appropriation Bill, which corrected errors in the versions passed by the two chambers of the National Assembly. The errors bothered on grammar and syntax.
The National Assembly passed the N9.12tn budget last week Wednesday after the Appropriation Bill had spent more than six months with the legislature.
The final figure was raised by over N508billion from the initial estimates of N8.612tn that the President laid before lawmakers on November 7, 2017. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives, however, identified and corrected various errors in the bill, while the Committees on Appropriations of both chambers formed a conference committee to harmonize the corrections.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Danjuma Goje, presented the Conference Committee’s report.
The House of Representatives also on Wednesday adopted the harmonized report on the 2018 budget, preparatory to Buhari’s assent.
With the adoption of the report, the budget is set for transmission to the President.
The House of Representatives had said that a clean copy of the 2018 budget would be on the table of the President for assent within one week from the date of passage.
