Fred Itua, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari will tomorrow present the 2021 Appropriation Bill to the joint session of the National Assembly.
President of Senate, Ahmad Lawan, read the letter from Buhari, conveying his intention to present the budget to National Assembly at plenary on Tuesday in Abuja.
“May I crave the kind indulgence of the distinguish Senate to grant me the slot of 11 hours on Thursday 8th October,2020 to formally present the 2021 Appropriation Bill to the Joint Session of the National Assembly.
“While I look forward to addressing the joint session, please accept, Mr Senate President, the assurances of my highest regards.
Meanwhile, senators elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have berated the poor economy and how President Buhari-led Federal Government handled it.
This is even as professional economists declared that the nation’s economy was nosediving as a result of exclusion of qualified and knowledgeable economists in the National Economic Management Team (NEMT).
The senators who were taken aback by the disclosure said they were not surprised at the parlous state of the economy since those managing it have little or no knowledge on how to make it vibrant.
Lamenting the exclusion of economists, President of Nigeria Economic Society (NCS), Professor Sarah Anyanwu, during visit on the Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, said since the exclusion of NEC members from NEMT, the nation’s economy has been nosediving .
Besides being excluded from the NEMT, NES president also lamented that the various MDAs were not patronising them for required expertise and capacity training of staffers.
She, however, requested the National Assembly to expedite action on consideration and passage of the bill NES forwarded to both chambers early in the year.
Irked by her lamentation, Abaribe and other PDP senators including Emmanuel Bwacha, George Sekibo, Sahabi Yau and Chukwuka Utazi said they were not surprised at the parlous state of the Nation’s economy.
Abaribe said: “We are not surprised that the economy went into recession and moving towards that direction again since as disclosed here, required knowledge from the experts are not even sought for.”
He, however, assured the NES members that expeditious consideration will be given to their bill already before both chambers of the National Assembly.
On the entourage of the NES team were Professors Peter Shibayan of the Department of Economics, University of Abuja , Eyilola Olaniyi also from the same Department, University of Abuja and others.
Meanwhile, the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) said it would partner with the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) on information gathering and sharing to achieve its mandate of actualising a corruption-free society.
Prof. Mohammed Isah, Chairman of the bureau, said this when he led board members of the organisation on a courtesy visit to the headquarters of the FIRS in Abuja, yesterday.