President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday  approved N4.99 trillion ($31.63 billion) budget passed by the National Assembly in December, the Presidency said, ending two months of dispute over the spending plan.

“Following consultations and an agreement between the Executive and the Legislature on the 2013 Appropriation Bill, President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday signed the bill into law,” a statement from the presidency said.

“As part of the understanding reached with its leadership, the observations of the executive arm … will be further considered by the National Assembly through legislative action.”

Meanwhile, in a bid to douse speculations over alleged face off between the Presidency and the National Assembly on the delayed Presidential assent to the 2013 Appropriation Act, the Senate, yesterday publicly declared that both arms of government were on the same page on the matter.

Addressing the press after plenary yesterday , the Senate’s spokesperson and Chairman, Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs, Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe, said all grey areas and knotty. Issues had been sufficiently resolved.

His words  ”All the issues that have come out on this budget have been resolved and we think that in the shortest possible time, the budget would be signed by the President and implementation will begin. So, there is nothing like overriding any veto or any such thing. That is not what the Senate has resolved in any way”.

Senator Abaribe also emphasised that the budget was delayed due to Senators’ position on constituency projects, stressing that the National Assembly was not in a position to award contracts or execute constituency projects as some members of the public insinuated.

He continued, “for those who are not aware, there is always a specific amount of money and that does not equate to padding. What we do with the constituency project is that there is a specific fund kept aside so that members of National Assembly can also bring things to their various constituencies. When there is announcement that people should bring their projects, it is also within a particular volume of fund and it is expended by various ministries. So, I don’t think that whatever problem they had with the budget had anything to do with constituency projects.

“May be, we have to address this matter in a much more elaborate manner so that Nigerians are appraised of what is going on here. There is the tendency to think that when you mention constituency projects, that Senators or members of House of Representatives in any way are given funds to spend. But do you know that it is not true?

According to Abaribe , the lawmakers do not pry into who carries out the constituency projects but is only interested in where such projects are sited.

The senate’s spokesman also denied allegations that the budget proposal for 2013 was padded by lawmakers..

Abaribe also emphasised that the power to appropriate budget lay squarely with the National Assembly and never the Executive.

“In other words, what the Executive brings is a proposal and it is up to the National Assembly to accept the proposal or modify it in some way and when that happens, necessarily, there must be differences. When you have those differences, we hold meetings for resolution of those differences and when they are resolved, we just move on,” he stated.

Nneka Amaechi-Nnadi,Abuja