Coming Soon: National Assembly Appropriations Bill

Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports

President Muhammadu Buhari will present and lay before the two chambers of the National Assembly the proposed N19.76 trillion budget for the 2023 fiscal year in the first week of October 2022, according to the House of Representatives Speaker, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila.

According to a report in Track News the federal government projects a deficit of N11.30 trillion in 2023 and wants to spend N19.76 trillion, a 15.37% increase from the amount in the 2022 budget.

The temporary chamber will be ready for use when the House reconvenes from its two-month break on Tuesday of next week, according to Gbajabiamila, who revealed the 2023 budget presentation during the inspection of the ongoing renovation work on the green chamber as well as the construction of the National Assembly Service Commission office.

If not for the fact that the project managers would be able to finish the main chamber’s renovation months ahead of schedule, the Speaker predicted that the 10th Assembly would be inaugurated in the temporary chamber.

Gbajabiamila responded to the question of whether the temporary chamber could hold all 360 MPs by saying, “You can see the configuration, it is not just this space, it is also above.”

“You see that the old chamber has been torn up,” he remarked. State-of-the-art upgrades will be made. At the end of the day, we will be pleased that our chambers meet the highest standards anywhere in the globe. I’m quite pleased with the work you’ve done so far.

“I’ll tell them to speed up by two times. Because of the current circumstances, whether favorably or sadly, this is for the advantage of the 10th Assembly rather than the 9th Assembly.

We are talking about close to a year as the old chamber won’t be finished until sometime in August 2023. However, things are going well thus far, and we are content with this temporary location. But so far so good, we are happy and this temporary site where we will be sitting for the next 9, 10 months is honestly a far cry from where we used to be but they have done well in adapting, this used to be hearing room to a legislative chamber. Adaptation – you made a lot of innovations.

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

Also speaking with journalists at the construction site of the National Assembly Service Commission, Bassey Olusegun Etuk, a Commissioner in the Commission said the 400 capacity building was pegged at the cost of N11.6 billion.

The National Assembly Service Commission has made this project its permanent location, and we are doing so for a number of reasons, including security and accessibility to the services we need. We currently reside in a rented apartment and have enough room here to meet all of our demands.

Senior architectural consultant for the project Michael Baka stated that it was 70% finished and would be ready next year. Baka also stated that the project had directly employed more than 200 Nigerians.