January-December Budget Cycle Under Threat

The December deadline given by the National Assembly to pass the 2023 Budget is under threat as all standing committees that are supposed to submit their reports to the Appropriation Committee failed to appear before it yesterday.

The appropriation committee has only two weeks remaining to revert to the Senate for further action but all the committees which were supposed to submit their reports on Friday failed to show up.

The committees that failed to appear before the appropriation committee headed by Barau Jibrin (APC, Kano North) are: Upstream, Downstream, Gas, Cooperation and Integration and Capital Markets.

Even though the Senate is working hard to maintain the January – December budget cycle, the Senate Committee on appropriations had no option than to adjourn its maiden meeting from yesterday to Monday due to non-appearance of subcommittees to hand in their reports.

Chairman of the committee, Senator Barau Jibrin, said the sub committees had been given another chance to appear on Monday, with a subtle warning that failing to comply will force the main committee to do the job for them.

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Barau, who directed the Clerk of the committee to write to all those concerned again, emphasized the need to adhere strictly to the timetable to ensure that the budget is passed in December.

“I want to say again that we shall not fail to go on with our commitment, making sure we do everything humanly possible to get this budget passed before the end of this year. It has been the practice in this 9th National Assembly and we shall not derail this laudable practice that everybody is happy with.

“We must adhere strictly to the timetable. Those who have not appeared today, we give them another chance to appear on Monday. If they refuse to appear on Monday – we are optimistic they will appear on Monday – but if you don’t appear, of course, we have our way of dealing with that kind of problem because the Appropriation Committee will then take charge of what they are supposed to do,” he said.

Barau added that the subcommittee was supposed to liaise with the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) under their purview, interact with them, scrutinise their budget estimates and bring the report to the appropriation committee.