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As the Senate resumes today, the budget defence by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) has ended and various committees have commenced harmonisation of their reports before the Appropriation Committee.
Read Also: What elementary economics says about Nigeria’s much debated budget
Proactive measures to hasten the 2020 budget passage and revert to the January-December budget cycle is top on agenda for discussion by the lawmakers. Senators are also expected to present motions of urgent national importance.
The Senate had, for the first time, adjourned for two weeks, and resumed October 28, to enable the committees to receive the MDAs for their budget defence.
Senate president, Ahmad Lawan, had announced that budget defence by MDAs, which began on Wednesday, October 16, was to last only till October 30.
Lawan had stated that “any MDA that failed to defend its budget within the scheduled time should not come and therefore consider its budget not defended.”
But the MDAs and Senate committees had failed to meet the earlier deadline due to some hitches such as non-appearance of heads of government agencies, and the inability of the agencies to furnish the committees with adequate information.
The Senate again was compelled to adjourn for a week, to resume November 5, to enable the committees further and conclude work.
By budget processes, after budget defence by MDAs, the Senate internal committees would present their reports before the National Assembly Committee on Appropriation for crosschecking of facts and figures.
The harmonisation is done to ensure that the budget votes are not omitted, padded, inflated and or illegally deducted before the final report is presented to the senators in plenary.
On Monday, our correspondent visited the National Assembly and observed that Senate committees were no longer entertaining budget presentations from MDAs.
However, it was further observed that only internal committees appeared before the Appropriation Committee to defend their reports. Also, some of the committee meetings were shifted to a new date. There are 68 committees in Senate.
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Barau Jibrin, confirmed that “no MDA is defending budget now and the appropriation committee is already meeting internally with the committees to take their reports on what transpired during budget defence by the MDAs.”
