The standing committees in each chamber have until Monday at midnight to turn in their reports on the 2024 budget, according to a deadline set by the Joint National Assembly Committee on Appropriations.

The command came from the joint committee’s head, Senator Solomon Adeola.

According to him, the National Assembly has to make this choice in order to approve the N27.5 trillion 2024 budget before the end of this month.

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The standing committees started turning in their reports to the combined committee on Monday.

The committees on tourism chaired by Senator Ireti Kingibe and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and diaspora chaired by Senator Victor Umeh were among the first to submit their reports.

During the meeting, Adeola made a request to all standing committees to meet the deadline.

According to the joint committee chairman, this would allow the

This will allow the National Assembly to meet the January-December budget cycle, according to the chairman of the joint committee.

The deadline is this Wednesday, so I’m ready, but I’m pleading with all of my colleagues to kindly provide me with all of the reports from the Senate’s standing committees.

“By Wednesday, it will be presumed that any agency or committee that has not turned in a report to the committee is granting us the omnibus authority to handle their budget without consulting that committee.

Therefore, we are pleading with all committee chairs to kindly turn in their reports by this Wednesday at the latest.

The Appropriations Committee brought up two problems based on the standing committee reports that were turned in yesterday: what would happen to the 136 Nigerians who are imprisoned in Ethiopia and the N5 billion that was suggested in the budget to renovate the Obudu Cattle Ranch in Cross River State.

Upon submitting his report, Umeh stated that a few of the 136 Nigerians incarcerated for different offences had requested to be moved back to Nigeria to complete their sentences.

He informed the committee that inadequate financing was impeding the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM), which is in charge of these affairs.

According to Umeh, the commission was given a N1.2 billion budget for 2024, of which N652.9 million was allocated for capital expenses.

The chairman of the committee stated that, in light of NiDCOM’s workload, his committee had suggested N4.9 billion for the agency’s capital budget.

He continued by saying that this would take care of five new line items that had been added to the budget, such as resolving the situation of Nigerians incarcerated, setting up summits for the diaspora, and implementing other initiatives to plan the activities of Nigerians residing abroad.

Adeola responded by saying that the panel would study the findings and determine how to raise NiDCOM’s funding while “taking into consideration the very important work they have been doing.”

“We will pay attention to NiDCOM in our reporting stage,” he continued. But first, we’ll prioritise and review the five new line items.

Senator Kingibe stated in her statement that the Obudu Cattle Ranch received more than N5 billion of the N7.9 billion capital allocation for the Ministry of Tourism.

She stated that she did not think it appropriate for one geopolitical zone to have more than half of the agency’s capital vote at the expense of other zones.

The joint committee acknowledged her concern and said that members would look into how the N5 billion would be used to guarantee that the Obudu Ranch renovation was the intended use.

We shall look into the rationale behind allocating this N5 billion to a single geopolitical region.

However, we also need to acknowledge that, even with this funding for tourism, we are still not there.

Adeola declared, “If we truly want to drive tourism in this country, we have to do more.”