Senate: Budget Gets to Presidency on Wednesday

The Senate, on Tuesday disclosed that the 2017 Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly will be transmitted to the Presidency for assent latest by Wednesday.

Spokesperson of the Upper Legislative Chamber, Senator Sabi Abdullahi, explained that the delay in the transmission of the bill was because the document was still undergoing legislative processes after it was passed last Thursday.

Speaking during plenary, Sabi explained that there were more legislative processes on the bill before it could be transmitted to the Presidency.

He said, “We passed the budget last week Thursday. Let us get this very clear: after a budget is passed, the appropriation committee must do authentication.

“The authentication means that it is not any document that should fly around; there must be something that will show that this is the main budget that we passed.

“If you are familiar with our procedures, you will see that the budget always carries some signatures.”

The National Assembly had, on Thursday, passed the 2017 Appropriation Bill, with budget estimates totalling ₦7.441tn.