All things being equal and without any distraction, President Muhammadu Buhari will today assent to the 2020 Appropriation Bill, IgbereTV reports.
By assenting to the bill, Nigeria will make a return to the January to December budget cycle.
The National Assembly leadership have been invited to Grace the event which is scheduled for 3pm. Among those that would personally grace the event would be the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan; and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, among others.
A source within the National Assembly, on Monday confirmed to IgbereTV, saying, “We have a notice from the presidency to be at the Presidential Villa on Tuesday to witness the signing of the budget. The date and time may change but I have it on good authority that the ceremony is billed for Tuesday.”
Recall that the Senate and the House of Representatives had on December 5, 2019, concurrently passed the 2020 Appropriation Bill, raising the total estimates from the proposed N10.33 trillion to about N10.6 trillion.
The National Assembly had put a clause in the bill that the budget should run from January 1, 2020, bringing Nigeria back to a January to December budget cycle.
Of the new total sum of N10,594,362,364,830, the parliament raised statutory transfers from the proposed N556.7 billion to N560,470,827,235; raised debt service from N2.45 trillion to N2,725,498,930,000; reduced recurrent (non-debt) expenditure from N4.88 trillion to N4,842,974,600,640; and increased development fund for capital expenditure from N2.14 trillion to N2,465,418,006,955.
As part of the N264 billion increment, the National Assembly raised its own budget from N125 billion to N128 billion.
Recall that the budget figures has generated controversies between president Buhari and the 8th National Assembly which had president Buhari accuse the legislative arm of padding the budget to suit them.
