FG Presents 2011 Budget Proposal, Tuesday

The long expected Appropriation Bill for the 2011 fiscal year will be presented to the National Assembly by President Goodluck Jonathan next Tuesday.

A statement read by Senate President, David Mark, during last Tuesday’s plenary session said President Jonathan sought the leave of the Senate to present the budget to the lawmakers on the said date.

As expected, the budget presentation is yet another task which may bring together the two chambers. But emerging signals indicate that the breach of confidence and the cold war that trailed the misunderstanding that erupted between Senators and members of the House of Representatives at the Minna Retreat for the Constitutional Review Joint Committee last year seems to have been finally laid to rest.

The indication came through the spokesman of the Senate, Senator Ayogu Eze who while fielding questions from journalists at a news briefing, said both chambers had regained each other’s confidence and are working together as one.

His words, “A lot of people have misunderstood the problem that occurred last year and no problem is forever, we had some little misunderstanding but I think we have put that behind us, you can see that most things we are doing we are working together as one body.

It is expected that in every organization, the junior colleagues should always listen to the senior both in their attitude and in their actions and I think that if the President has a desire to come and address the nation we should not deprive him of such desire.

“If what happened in Minna did not happen, we were running like one family and I think that we are confident that we have regained the confidence of each other and we are working together as a one National Assembly and really,” Senator Ayogu, therefore, indicated that this time, the issue of venue for the presentation would not be a problem as either of the chambers can join the other at any venue which has the required capacity.

“we don’t have any problem whether it is held in the green chamber or the red chamber. If the green chamber is the one that has all the accommodation to take all of us, we don’t have any problem with that,” he said.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Information, Senator Eze, at the press briefing also confirmed that the senate would pass the amendments to the Electoral Act next week even with a lot of variations from the House of Representatives’ version passed Wednesday.

His words, “a lot of you thought that the passage of the Electoral Act by the House was also the passage by the Senate. I want to use this opportunity to clarify that we have not passed the Electoral Act in the Senate, we will pass it next week and then when we pass it, we are expecting that there will be a lot of differences between the version that we will pass.

“Some differences, not a lot between the version that we will pass and the version that will be passed in the House, and therefore, we are expecting that there will be a conference committee that will look at harmonising it speedily so that we can pass it before we proceed on holiday.

He went ahead to add that the difference in the versions of the two Houses does not mean disagreement between both Houses.

Nneka Amaechi-Nnadi, Abuja