President Bola Tinubu has told the National Assembly (NASS) that he would soon present the 2024 supplementary budget.
“I submitted the last budget to you,” the President said when he addressed a joint sitting of the National Assembly on Wednesday.
“You expeditiously passed it. We are walking the talk. I will soon bring the Year 2024 (Supplementary) Appropriation Bill. That is just for your information,” the President said in his terse speech at the joint sitting to mark the Silver Jubilee Of Nigeria’s 4th Republic.
In his response, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, said, “Thank you, Mr President, we will be expecting the Supplementary Appropriation Bill of 2024 as soon as possible.”
‘No Foreign Aid Will Fix Nigeria’
Also, at the joint sitting which coincided with the first anniversary of the Tinubu administration, the President confirmed ‘Nigeria, we hail thee’ as the “latest national anthem”.
Tinubu said, “You sang out the latest national anthem, ‘Nigeria, we hail thee’. This is our diversity, representing all characters and how we blend to be brothers and sisters.”
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The President pleaded with both the Senate and the House of Representatives to continue to collaborate and work together with the administration to build the country on the path of sustained progress and development.
“We have no other choice; it is our nation. No other institution or personality will help us unless we do it ourselves. No amount of aid from foreign countries or any other nation (will fix us), they take care of themselves first. Let us work together as we are doing to build our nation, not only for us but for generations unborn,” he said.
Wobbling Naira
Tinubu had on January 1, 2024, assented to the ₦28.7 trillion 2024 Appropriation Bill passed by the Senate.
The 2024 budget was ₦1.2 trillion higher than the budget originally proposed by the President to a joint NASS session on November 29, 2023. Christened the 2024 ‘Budget of Renewed Hope’, the President had pegged oil price at $77.96 with a daily oil production estimate of 1.78 million barrels per day.
The President had also pegged the naira at ₦750/$1 but barely weeks into the operationalisation of the budget, the naira plunged to nearly ₦2,000/$1 in February. The currency, which has wobbled in an unprecedented manner against the United States’ greenback in the last months since the unification of the foreign exchange windows, currently exchanges for around ₦1500/$1.
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