Gbaja: Buhari may present 2023 budget to n’assembly in October

Femi Gbajabiamila, speaker of the house of representatives, says President Muhammadu Buhari may present the 2023 budget to the national assembly in October.

Gbajabiamila disclosed this on Wednesday during the inspection of the ongoing renovation work on the green chamber, as well as the construction of the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC) office.

According to NAN, he said the president will present and lay before the two chambers of the national assembly, the proposed N19.76 trillion budget for the 2023 financial year next month.

“I am hoping that the budget will be presented latest by the first week of October,” he said.

On the ongoing national assembly renovation, the speaker said the temporary chamber will be ready for use when the house resumes from its two-month recess next week Tuesday, September 20, 2022.

He said the 10th assembly would most likely be inaugurated in the temporary chamber, except the project managers would be able to complete the renovation of the main chamber months before the scheduled deadline.

“You see that the old chamber has been ripped apart. The innovations are going to be state-of-the-art. We will at the end of the day be proud to have a chamber that matches the best standard all over the world. I am quite impressed with the work so far,” he said.

“I will encourage them to double the pace. Because as it is, unfortunately, or fortunately, this is not for the benefit of the 9th assembly, it is for the benefit of the 10th assembly. 

“The old chamber is not going to be ready until sometime in August 2023 so we are talking about close to a year. But so far so good, we are happy and this temporary site is where we will be sitting for the next nine or 10 months. It is honestly a far cry from where we used to be but they have done well in adapting.

“The 10th assembly is most likely (taking off here) unless work can be accelerated but we don’t want to accelerate work and compromise the quality of work. So it is better late but done well, everything worth doing is worth doing well.”

Speaking also at the construction site, Bassey Etuk, NASC commissioner, said the 400-capacity building was pegged at the cost of N11.6 billion.

“This project is the permanent site of the NASC and the reasons we are moving here are various: security, proximity to the service targeted functions,” he said.

“Here we have enough space, we are presently at an occupied rented apartment and here we cater for all our needs.”