Barely 48hours after President Bola Tinubu Presented the N27.5 trillion 2024 Budget to the joint session of the national Assembly the Senate on Friday passed the 2024 budget for second reading despite lapses
The bill was passed for second reading during Friday’s plenary after lawmakers debated its general principles without having the breakdown of the estimates, including sectoral allocations. .
For expeditious consideration at committee levels and final passage before Christmas, the Senate mandated its committee on Appropriations, to after collation of reports from various standing committees, submit final report on the budget to the Senate on Tuesday, December 19, 2023 .
It accordingly adjourned plenary to Tuesday , December 12, 2023 , for the various standing committees to have budget defence sessions with heads of Ministeries, Parastatals and Agencies (MDAs) under their oversight purview.
Speaking during the debate, some senators lamented the non-availability of the budget breakdown, which they said limited their comments to the president’s speech.
They however, decried poor allocation to critical sectors, especially education and power.
But some Senators like the Minority Leader, Senator Abba Moro (PDP Benue South) , Enyinnaya Abaribe (APGA Abia South), Francis Adenigba Fadahunsi ( PDP Osun East) etc, picked holes in some aspect of the budget .
Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe (Abia South) said: “I have looked at the Appropriation Bill and I discovered that the provision for the power sector is 3% Power is very fundamental . How do we generate job if there is no power? I think we need to reorder the budget otherwise the whole thing will be garbage in, garbage out.”
The minority leader, Senator Abba Moro (Benue South) said the 7% allocation to the education sector was against the UNESCO’s recommended 26% of national buget.
He said the poor vote for education in the 2024 budget would be a serious problem to the president’s effort on human capital development, especially educating children.
He described the envelope system of budgeting as a cesspool of corruption, saying if the system was not change, the 2024 proposal may not achieve desired result.
Moro and Francis Fadahunsi (Osun East) complained that funds earlier allocated to construct roads in the previous budgets were re-appropriated to fund palliatives.
Senator Ahmad Lawan (Yobe North) urged his colleagues to ask questions about the implementation of 2023 budget, including allocation to security.
“We have every reason to spend more and more money on security until we get it right. If we want our children to go to schools, farmers go to farm, more money should be allocated to security but at the same time the previous funds should be accounted for,” he said.