Nigeria’s acting President Yemi Osinbajo has signed the 2017 budget almost four weeks after the National Assembly transmitted the appropriation bill to the presidency.
Recalled that the budget passed by the National Assembly since almost a month ago, was dogged by some delay on the executive side as there were some arguments over the alterations of some priority projects by the Assembly and also an expansion of the budget from what President Buhari presented last December.
The Vice-president said the issues had been resolved and that the Assembly had promised to approve funding for the development defining projects very dear to the executive.
“I must say that the entire leadership of the National Assembly led by the Senate President and the Speaker, adopted a commendably patriotic and statesmanlike approach to our engagements on resolving these critical issues”, Osinbajo said.
“In sum, the engagements yielded acceptable results . The most important being that the leadership of the National Assembly has given us a commitment that the National Assembly will re-instate the budgetary allocations for all the important executive projects, such as the railway standard gauge projects, the Mambilla Power Project, the Second Niger Bridge, the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway etc. which they had reduced to fund some of the new projects they introduced.
