President Muhammadu Buhari has signed the 2023 Appropriation Bill into law.
The Quest Times gathered that the Appropriation Bill, 2023 totalling N21.83 trillion was signed at the Council Chambers of the State House in Abuja on Tuesday.
This development comes six days after the National Assembly passed the bill.
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The budget represents an increase of N1.32 trillion from the N20.51 trillion budget proposal of President Buhari.
A breakdown of the budget indicates an allocation of N967.5 billion for statutory transfers, N6.6 trillion for debt servicing, N8.3 trillion for recurrent expenditure, and N5.9 trillion for capital expenditure.
The 2023 Appropriation Bill was deferred two weeks ago over what the Senate President described as problems discovered in it.
The 2023 budget of N21.83 trillion maintained the recurrent expenditure at approximately N8.27 trillion, while capital expenditure increased from N5.35 trillion to N5.9 trillion and debt servicing also increased from N6.31 trillion to N6.6 trillion.
The Senate President Ahmed Lawan had hinted last week that barring any last minute changes, President Buhari will sign the 2023 appropriation bill on Tuesday.
Lawan confirmed this to State House correspondents on Friday after a closed-door meeting with Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He revealed that he discussed some national issues with Buhari, including the president’s recent additional loan request, the legislature’s support to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ahead of the general elections and the 2023 Appropriation Bill.
He said: ”We are looking forward to Mr President signing the Appropriation Bill 2023, by the grace of God, on Tuesday.
“This because we signed the document yesterday (Thursday), having lost some time because of some anomalous figures we had in the bill presented to the National Assembly (NASS).
“But thank God, the NASS in both chambers have passed the Appropriation Bill 2023 on Wednesday, and I’m sure that Mr President and his team, on the executive side, will work on what we have done.
”And the first thing on Tuesday, the first official working day of the year, I believe that Mr President will be signing the Appropriation Bill 2023.”
He lamented that the NASS would have passed the bill a week earlier had it not been for irregularities spotted in the bill.
“We are very pleased that we have been able to, in the last four years, ensure the passage of the appropriation bills in record time before every Christmas, and Mr President had always signed before the end of the year.
“This year, particularly, is because of the anomalous, very undesirable and unfortunate situation that we had to delay a little bit.
“You will recall that the NASS had to cut down its Christmas recess to come back on Wednesday for the sole purpose of passing the appropriation bill which we could have passed a week before. So all the same, there’s nothing that we missed,” he stated.