SPEECH DELIVERED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE AND CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, DISTINGUISHED SENATOR AHMAD IBRAHIM LAWAN, Ph.D., CON, AT THE PRESENTATION OF THE 2022 BUDGET ESTIMATES BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI, GCFR, TO A JOINT SESSION OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, ON 7TH OCTOBER, 2021.
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Mr. President, I welcome you and your entourage, on behalf of my colleagues, Distinguished senators and Honorable members of the House of Representatives, to the third Joint session of the Ninth National Assembly for the presentation of the 2022 Appropriation Bill.
Your Excellency, on Thursday, 8th October, 2020, you laid before this august Assembly the 2021 Appropriation Bill
which was the second in the life of this ninth National Assembly. Today, 7th October, 2021, you will be laying the 2022 Appropriation Bill. Mr President I commend you for maintaining this trajectory of presenting the annual budget estimates before the joint sitting of the National Assembly in good time to enable the assembly work on the bill.
Mr. President, the members of the ninth National Assembly have kept to their promise of passing the annual Appropriation Bill before the end of the year to ensure that the Bill is signed into law before the beginning of the new year. The 2020, and 2021 Appropriation Bills were considered and passed before the end of each year. The Distinguished and Honorable members of the National Assembly remain committed to working on the 2022 Appropriation Bill and pass it before the end of this year.
Mr President, the Nigerian economy and indeed our citizens are benefitting from the early passage and assent to the 2020 and 2021 Appropriation Bills. We all recall that the 2020 budget was fully implemented, becoming the first and only budget that was implemented 100 percent since the fourth Republic began. This no doubt has helped our country to deal with economic recession that we faced as occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr President, unlike many other countries, Nigeria was able to come out of the recession due to the ability of this administration to deploy the resources to support the economy.
Mr President, the second – quarter GDP report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased by 5.01% in the second quarter of 2021 – the strongest growth since fourth quarter 2014 is a trajectory that we need to sustain.
There is no doubt that this early presentation and subsequent timely consideration by National Assembly will make that possible.
Your Excellency, the implementation of the 2021 Appropriation Act so far indicates that, it is possible to achieve the feat of the 2020 budget implementation. We must therefore work assiduously to continue with that moment.
Mr President, the 2021 budget and indeed the 2020 budget provided for significant infrastructure development across the country. It is imperative that we prioritize the completion of on-going projects on the development of infrastructure. The 2022 budget should be targeted at completion and consolidation of the projects embarked upon.
Your Excellency, generating and collecting revenues have remain major challenges in our quest for development. The recent efforts by the National Assembly as well as the Executive to challenge the revenue generating agencies is a step in the right direction. Equally important is the recent position taken by the Legislature and the Executive to insist on zero allocation for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that fail to remit/upload their revenues for the 2022 Appropriation. This saw an increase in the contribution of the MDAs by over N400 Billion. It is my view that MDAs can contribute to the Federation account much more than that. This policy should be expanded and deepen to cover more MDAs.
Mr President, the need to enhance revenue generation and collection cannot be overemphasized. The level of budget deficit is high, and both the Legislature and the
Executive should work to reduce this deficit through the availability of more revenues.
I must commend the Senate and House Committees on Finance and the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning for working together to improve the level of revenues for the government.
Mr President, we understand that due to paucity of revenue, the Federal Government has to resort to raising funds from foreign and domestic sources to provide infrastructure across the country. That is why, the National Assembly approved the requests for borrowing.
The Commitment of the Federal Government in providing infrastructure across the country means that the funds must be raised one way or the other. Government should also explore other sources of funding its projects in order to reduce borrowing.
Mr President, let me congratulate the National Assembly and the Executive for the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill and assent to enact the Petroleum Industry Act 2021. The ninth National Assembly broke the jinx of the non-passage of the PIB over the years and Your Excellency, you have achieved the feat of assenting to the Bill. Let me also commend you for starting to implement the PIA immediately, with nominations of qualified Nigerians to serve on the Petroleum Down and Midstream Regulatory Authority and Petroleum Upstream Regulatory Commission.
Mr President, the security of lives and property of Nigerians is still a challenge. The National Assembly is ever willing to work with the Executive arm of Government to continue to work for better security for our citizens. The recent changes in the leadership of the armed forces is a clear testimony of the collaboration between the Legislature and the Executive to overhaul the security
architecture for better outcomes in our fight against the myriads of security challenges.
Mr President, the recent passage of the supplementary budget 2021 that appropriated over eight hundred billion naira to our security agencies is a commendable step in the right direction. Federal Government should therefore continue to provide more resources to our security agencies to sustain the gains made so far.
In conclusion Mr President, I want to assure you that Distinguished senators and Honorable members of the ninth National Assembly will immediately start work on the 2022 Appropriation Bill. In doing so, we will be guided by sense of duty, responsibility, equity, fairness, justice and patriotism.
On this note, it is now my singular honor and privilege to invite His Excellency, Mr President, Commander – in – Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federation, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, to present the 2022 budget estimates to the Joint session of the National Assembly.