Members of the National Assembly have insisted on the amendments made to the 2022 Appropriation Bill, including the reduction of allocation to 10,733 projects and insertion of 6,576 new ones.
The lawmakers stated that by the power of appropriation conferred on the National Assembly by the constitution, the parliament has the right to tinker with the Federal Government’s budget like any other bill.
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According to the members, who spoke to Punch, in separate interviews on Sunday, the changes made and the response by President Muhammadu Buhari, showed that the legislature was not a rubber stamp of the Executive, as being alleged by Nigerians.
Buhari had on Friday while signing into law, the 2022 Appropriation Bill and the 2021 Finance Bill, expressed strong reservations on the “worrisome changes” made by the National Assembly to the Federal Government’s budget.
He argued that the cuts in the provisions for several of these projects by the National Assembly might render the projects “un-implementable” or set back their completion, especially some of this administration’s strategic capital projects.
The President declared that he would revert to the National Assembly with a request for amendment after the parliament’s resumption so that critical ongoing projects cardinal to his regime would not suffer a setback due to reduced funding.
Source: Punch