Despite repeated assurances that the 2023 Appropriation Bill would be passed Thursday, the National Assembly deferred its passage till next week Wednesday after new problems were discovered in the budget document.

It will now be passed, all other things being equal next week Wednesday when the legislators return from their Christmas break.

According to the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, on Thursday at the start of plenary, the passage was shifted due to ‘problems’ discovered in the budget. The Senate President said the lawmakers cannot pass the budget because it “came with some problems” that were discovered by the National Assembly Committees on Appropriations.

“The Appropriation Bill came to the National Assembly with some problems and when our Committees on Appropriations in the Senate and House of Representatives started to reconcile the figures of what has been done and what was presented. The problems became obvious and not easy to deal with and the Committees had to start a process of cleaning up the bill. That process engaged the Executive because the problem came from them. They (committees) only concluded that yesterday,” he explained.

He, however, did not provide details of the kind of “problems” discovered in the budget but told his colleagues that the committee secretariat was not able to finish processing the report. And that they cannot present it; “today or tomorrow… nor Monday and Tuesday because of public holiday.”

“Consequently, we can only receive and consider the report on Wednesday 28, next week,” he said. President Muhammadu Buhari had on 7th October 2022 presented the 2023 Appropriation Bill to the Joint Session of the National Assembly.

The proposed Revenue and Expenditure budgets for 2023 are ₦9.73 trillion and ₦20.51 trillion, respectively, resulting in ₦10.78 trillion fiscal deficit, which represents 4.78% of GDP. The President also on Wednesday transmitted a supplementary 2023 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly.

President Buhari, in the cover letter, said the additional demand for N819,536,937,813 for next year was due to the devastation caused by floods on farmlands and road infrastructure. He said Nigeria witnessed the “worst flood incidents in recent history, which has caused massive destruction of farmlands,” stressing that the country now risks food insecurity.

According to him, the floods affected “several roads and bridges” across the 36 states of the federation.