The chairman of the senate committee on Appropriation, Senator Jibrin Barau on Wednesday said only the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan can tell the nation when the 2022 Appropriation bill will be passed.
There were speculation that the senate may pass the bill at its Wednesday plenary, but Senator Barau, representing Kano north senatorial district stunned newsmen and vehemently declared that only Lawan could make such pronouncement.
Rising from a meeting of the committee on Appropriation with a delegation of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the National Population Commission (NPC), Barau declined comments on the time for the passage.
He said “I don’t have the authority to tell you that whether the budget will be passed this week or not, but we are still working on it.
“You can make your calculations. I don’t have the authority, the senate president will be the one to tell you that”.
He said the committee met separately with the two delegations.
“We had interaction with INEC and National Population Commission in respect of complaints we had from different quarters about insufficient funds that have been provided for them in the 2022 appropriation bill.
“And because of the stance of the senate of the federal Republic of Nigeria, that these two Institutions need to be properly cater for in terms of their funding. We all know the importance of elections in this country. It is the foundation of every democracy.
“If you don’t get it right in your Electoral process you are in trouble as a nation. So that is why we said let us not
wait until the problem manifest itself. That is why we decided to have interaction with them to see where we can do something for them to perform optimally”.
On whether the committee engaged INEC on the issue of Direct primary, he said “no we didn’t discuss that with INEC. We never discussed that. Something that has to with election, includes sensitive materials, that we will not want to be discussed openly.
“INEC said they don’t want everybody to know the time and the type of system and procurement of certain items they are going to use because of security concerns. Because they are going to bring ballot papers from somewhere and these criminals, bandits. You have seen how INEC facilities were burnt in certain parts of the country, if the criminals understand this is the time you are bringing item A or B, it could bring problem to the entire election. So that is why they don’t want these items open to everyone”.
Speaking on the 2022 budget proposal, the lawmaker said “well I don’t want us to go into the knitty gritty of what is contained in the budget. The budget is a very voluminous document, am sure anything that need to be done has been done.
“We have people with integrity, they have done well in the preparation of the budget and am sure all those area of concern have been taken care of. So that is why we interacted with them to cross all t’s and dot the i’s so that we don’t produce an appropriation act that would be faulty in terms of funding of our elections and funding population census and housing census. We don’t want anything that will impede them in terms of finance” Barau added.
