President Bola Tinubu’s sketchy N27.5 trillion budget for the 2024 fiscal year has sparked a fresh controversy.
Tinubu had on Wednesday presented budget to a joint session of the National Assembly, during which he asked the lawmakers to pass the document in 30 days.
The budget passed its first reading in both chambers of parliament when President Tinubu presented it.
A day after the president’s presentation, the Red Chamber began the debate on the general principles of the proposals without getting the breakdown of the estimates, including allocations to different sectors.
Our correspondent observed that the senators before the debate commenced, were only distributed copies of the budget speech and the lead debate presented by the Senate Leader, Michael Opeyemi Bamidele.
Senator Kawu Sumaila (Kano) had urged his colleagues to suspend the consideration of the budget pending when they were provided with the details.
He had said, “We are representing interests here. Where are the budget details? We need to have the bill. We don’t have any idea about the sectoral allocations and what our constituents will be getting. It is very strange in the parliament.”
But his colleagues continued with the consideration, a deviation from previous budget considerations in the parliament, where the lawmakers were given the breakdown of the budget estimates and convened in plenary to debate its general principles after studying the document.
