The Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola (APC, Ogun West), has disclosed that January 31st is the tentative date for the passage of the N49.7 trillion budget for the 2025 fiscal year.
The Senate would also suspend the plenary for two weeks upon resumption on the 14th of this month to ensure the seamless passage of the N49.7 trillion 2025 budget.
Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, Senator representing Ogun West and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, made both disclosures on Monday during a session with Chairmen of other standing committees in the Senate.
At the meeting with certain chairmen of the Senate’s Standing Committees and Principal Officers in attendance, Senator Adeola, who acknowledged that the time available to the lawmakers was not adequate, however, maintained that the best must be made out of it.
He said, “Before this meeting with the chairmen of the various standing committees in the Senate, the Appropriation Committee met for several hours on the best way to handle the consideration of the 2025 budget, which was presented to the National Assembly on Wednesday, 18th December 2024, by President Bola Tinubu and passed for second reading by both the Senate and the House of Representatives on Thursday, 19th December 2024.
“For expeditious and thorough consideration, hard copies of the budget proposals were obtained and already given to the chairmen of the various committees as required reference documents during budget defence sessions with heads of MDAs under their purview.
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“The tentative timetable that has been drawn for consideration of the budget at committee level is that budget defence sessions begin from tomorrow (Tuesday), while reports from various committees are expected to be submitted from the 15th to the 18th of this month.
Afterwards, collation and tidying up of the various reports will be done by the Appropriation Committee with the hope of laying the final report on the budget to the Senate on the 31st of this month.
“However, the 31st of January, fixed for laying of the budget, is tentative as it is just given to guide our working.”
The Senate Committee on Appropriations later went into a closed-door session with the Chairmen of the various standing committees.
Similarly, the House of Representatives will commence the 2025 budget defence session with Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) today, Tuesday, January 7
The Chairman, House Committee on Appropriations, Rep. Abubakar Kabir Abubakar Bichi, stated this while speaking to journalists after an inaugural meeting with chairmen of the various committees of the House on Monday.
He said that reports from the budget defence exercise by the committees would hopefully be harmonised on January 22 while the Appropriations Committee would lay its report before the House on January 31st.
