Senate President Bukola Saraki has given the committees deliberating on the 2017 budget proposal a last due date of tomorrow (Thursday) to present their reports.
Likewise at the House of Representatives, Speaker Yakubu Dogara declared Thursday March 30, 2017 as due date for committees in the House to hand over their reports of 2017 budget to the Committee on Appropriation.
Saraki, who passed on the due date after a closed-door session of around two hours yesterday, communicated dissatisfaction that more than 20 committees are yet to submit answer to the Danjuma Goje-led Appropriation Committee.
The Senate President cautioned that after Thursday due date, the upper legislative chamber would have no real option except to embrace the submissions from the executive arm of government.
Making the declaration on the floor of the House, Dogara said there was the need to earnestly consider and pass the 2017 Appropriation bill.
He enjoined committees yet to finish up the investigation of the different budgetary wholes of the government organs they regulate, to rapidly do as such and hand over their reports to the committees.
In the interim, four members from the House of Representatives: Ahmed Babba Kaita, Karimi Sunday, Eucharia Azodo and Aishatu Jibril Dukku supported four discrete yet related bills aimed at amending the Electoral Act 2010.
The proposed amendment to the Electoral Act to provide for death of a presidential or gubernatorial candidate during an on-going election.”
The bills additionally try to give a timetable to the submission of lists of candidate, criteria for substitution of candidates and to enable the commission to maintain party primaries where there is an adjustment in the outcomes and for other related matters.
Sunday (Kogi: Yagba: PDP), whose bill is gone for turning away the Kogi electoral fiasco needed the incorporation of another sub-segment 2 to Section 33 of the Electoral Act by evacuating the equivocalness or lacuna that may emerge thus of the demise of a presidential or gubernatorial applicant after beginning of poll yet before finish of the said election.
Additionally, the House of Representatives yesterday passed a motion to stop the commercialization of some key maritime services of the Nigeria Navy (NN).
Receiving a motion moved by Ehiozuwa Johnson Agbonayinma at the plenary presided by Speaker Yakubu Dogara, the House asked the Ministry of Defense to guarantee the mandate is completed with prompt impact.
The legislators additionally set out to set up an Ad-Hoc Committee to examine the course of action for a business model between the Ministry of Defense, the Nigerian Navy and Shorefac Consortium Ltd and others on the commercialization of the Nigerian Navy .
The Senate yesterday encouraged President Muhammadu Buhari, to give assets to reclaim all Federal Government pension indebtdness of about N174billion.
This took after a motion, titled “The untold hardship of pensioners occasioned by government’s failure to contribute its statutory share of 5 per cent to the Pension Redemption Fund,” sponsored by Senator Emmanuel Paulker (PDP Bayelsa Central).
