Why National Assembly Speedily Passed Tinubu’s Supplementary Budget – Abbas

Eko Hot Blog reports that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, has explained why the National Assembly “speedily” passed the 2023 supplementary budget into law.

Abbas spoke on Thursday after the supplementary appropriation bill passed the third reading at both the upper and lower legislative chambers.

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved the bill on Monday, while the president transmitted it to the legislature on Tuesday.

In transmitting the budget, Tinubu asked the lawmakers to “speedily” consider and approve the bill.

The national assembly granted the president’s “speedy approval” request on Thursday.

Prior to the approval of the budget, the house had briefly adjourned the plenary before it hurriedly reconvened for the vote and proceedings of the day to be adopted.

Abbas said the development was because the president “may” sign it into law tomorrow (Friday).

He noted that the legislature gave a speedy passage to the bill because of “this emergency development.”

“What we earlier did was the normal practice of waiting until the next legislative date to adopt the vote and proceedings to give it legal status,” the lawmaker said.

“However, in view of this emergency development, I’m here calling back the house to reconsider the vote and proceedings of today so that it can be put on record formed alliance with whatever we have discussed.”

Both chambers of the national assembly passed a N2 billion supplementary budget into law amid criticisms of wasteful spending.

The supplementary budget would support the provisional wage of N35,000 to workers, costing the federal government N210 billion and N400 billion as cash transfers to vulnerable Nigerians, among others.

However, some line items in the supplementary budget have elicited widespread criticism. A few of such provisions are the purchase of vehicles worth N1.5 billion for the office of the first lady, and a presidential yacht at N5 billion.

A breakdown of the figure showed that the federal government earmarked N2,900,000,000 for the purchase of sports utility vehicles (SUV) vehicles.

The renovation of residential quarters for the president, and Aguda house, the resident of the vice president, will gulp N4,000,000,000; and N2,500,000,000, respectively.

A presidential spokesperson said the vehicles are for State House aides who currently lack operational vehicles.

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