Senate Gives Committee Today’s Deadline to Finish Budget Defense for Fiscal Year 2022 Appropriation Bill

The Senate gave its Appropriations Committee until today to finish its defense of the Appropriations Bill for 2022.

President of the Senate, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, who set the deadline in plenary, gave the Committee 24 hours to finish budget defense by upper chamber subcommittees.

According to him, the ultimatum was necessary in order to meet the National Assembly’s December 14 deadline for passing the 2022 budget.

He went on to say that working in the opposite direction could jeopardize the budget’s timely passage, while assuring Nigerians that the National Assembly would work assiduously to resolve any potential stumbling blocks to the budget’s quick passage next month.

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Lawan praised government ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) for testifying before Red Chamber committees to defend their budget estimates.

“According to our schedule for budget defense and subsequent processing by our Appropriations Committee committees or subcommittees, tomorrow is the final day for budget defense.”

“Tomorrow is the last day for appropriation subcommittees to defend their budgets before the committee on appropriations.

“It gives me great pleasure to report that all of our committees have completed their budget defenses with ministries, departments, and agencies in accordance with the Senate’s schedule. However, there is one snag: some of our committees are running behind schedule.

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“So, I’m sure that those committees that should have appeared before the appropriations committee but were unable to did face some difficulties in obtaining information from the MDAs.”

“We have to finish the budget defense by the subcommittees before the committee on appropriations tomorrow, regardless of what happens,” he added.

“In fact, it is very, very important that we keep to our timetable, or else, we may run into a very serious problem with our time for the budget to be considered and passed by the 14th of December,” the Senate President said, explaining why work on the budget must be completed on time.

“I’m confident that our committees will be able to testify before the Appropriations Committee tomorrow.”

“I’ll also add that the Appropriations Committee should make itself available to our appropriations subcommittees.”

“We have until the weekend to finish the work of defense by the subcommittees before the appropriations committee, so that the appropriations committee can work on compiling the document for us to work with when we come to the next segment of the budget processing – the laying, consideration, and passage of the budget proposal by the grace of God.”

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“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our committees for their hard work thus far, and I’m confident that we’ll be able to overcome this minor snag.”

“Overall, the program is moving forward, and I’m especially pleased that we were able to complete the MDAs’ defense, and I commend the MDAs for coming forward to defend rather than leaving us to do what we think they want.”