Apparently overwhelmed by the political brinkmanship associated with the election of leaders for the 9th National Assembly, the Senate on Tuesday could not conclude deliberations on the 2019 Appropriation Bill and postponed its passage by two weeks.
The upper legislative chamber stated that it adjourned plenary till April 9 to allow its Committee on Appropriation conclude work on the bill, which had been with the National Assembly for over three months.
Curiously, the Committee failed to submit its report on the budget as proposed when the Senate adjourned on March 20, with the Vice Chairman, Sen. Sonni Ogbuoji, saying then that less than 10 committees out of over 60 had submitted their budget reports to it
The Vice Chairman reported at Tuesday plenary: “Our report is not ready because some committees are yet to submit their reports. “For now we have less than 10 committees that have submitted their reports. We actually requested that they submit their reports last week, but since we do not have the reports we want to extend it to Friday this week latest.
“So we are asking for two weeks. If they submit by Friday the reports should be ready in two weeks’ time. I plead that the House empowers the committee to go with the Executive position for committees that fail to submit their reports,” Ogbuoji added.
Having listened to the committee’s vice chairman, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, asked the committee to tidy up its report and lay it latest on April 11, to enable the House pass the budget on April 16.
He said: “We suspended sitting so that today the Appropriation Committee can lay its report for consideration. We must make sure they submit latest Friday. So let us agree that they will submit on Friday and we will suspend plenary by one week till April 9.
“We should be able to reconvene here on April 9 and latest April 11 to lay the report and pass the budget latest on April 16. “We have the Easter break coming. So we do not have the luxury of time”, Saraki maintained.
The Senator warned that any standing committee that did not comply with the deadline would be sanctioned, adding that the upper legislative chamber in such a case resort to Executive position on the budget.
It would be recalled that the Senate had on March 20, adjourned plenary to April 2, to enable its standing committees attend to heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies’ (MDAs) budget defence following which the Committee on Appropriation would lay its report.
