Following concerns raised by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), over the recently signed 2022 Appropriation Bill, Senate President Ahmed Lawan has said the National Assembly was correct in its judgment.
Lawan said this on Friday at the Presidential Villa shortly after signing the budget.
Earlier, The PUNCH had reported that Buhari expressed ‘strong reservations on ‘‘worrisome changes’’ made by the National Assembly to the 2022 Executive Budget proposal.
Speaking to State House Correspondents, the Senate President said, “I think the most important thing is that Mr President is happy with the majority of what the National Assembly has done. That is the most critical thing that we need to focus on.
“As for the observations Mr President has raised, this is a natural and logical tendency between the executive and the legislature. Sometimes, our views on certain issues may not be the executive’s view.
“So I don’t think what the President did, by raising some observations, is something we should worry about. I’m happy that the President signed the budget in the first place. And he said it’s going back to the National Assembly to seek amendments or virement. This is a natural, logical legislative process.
“I believe that the National Assembly was right in its judgment, but there is nothing wrong in the executive arm of government coming back to the National Assembly to see how we’re able to dialogue and go through the process and see where the misunderstanding is. But I don’t think that is supposed to be a worrisome development for us.”
Lawan further explained that government-owned enterprises should contribute double the N500bn revenue reflected in the budget.
“This is based on judgments when we asked for more resources coming from the independent sources, especially from the government-owned enterprises of about N400bn to N500bn is because we believe that these government-owned enterprises should contribute even much more. In fact, I hold the opinion that they should have contributed about a trillion, at least not N500bn or so.”
He also said that by signing the budget, the Federal Government is setting an example for subnational governments.
