THE Nigerian Senate has extended the implementation of the capital component of the 2024 budget to December 31, 2025.
The Upper Chamber passed the resolution during plenary on Tuesday, June 24, marking the second time the 2024 budget has been extended.
In December 2024, the upper and lower legislative chambers approved the extension of the 2024 budget to run till June 30, 2025, following a request by President Bola Tinubu.
The approval halted the January-December budget cycle introduced in 2020 by the ninth National Assembly as a strategy to enhance budget performance, The ICIR reported.
Tinubu had said at the time that the request was to enable the executive arm to complete ongoing capital projects and optimise budgetary allocations.
At Tuesday’s plenary, the Deputy Senate President, Barau Jibrin, who presided over the plenary, announced the extension following the expedition passage of its first, second, and third readings.
While leading the debate during the plenary, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Olamilekan Adeola, explained that the extension was required to allow the federal government to complete ongoing projects captured in the budgets.
He expressed that the federal government does not have enough resources to capture the expenditures proposed in the budget, urging his colleagues to support the extension of the 2024 budget to avoid abandoning projects in different parts of the country.
With this extension, Nigeria is now operating two budgets, the 2024 and 2025 appropriations, within a single fiscal year, the first time ever.
Similarly, the House of Representatives passed for the second reading a bill to extend the capital component implementation of the 2024 budget from June 30 to December 31.
The bill was presented by the deputy Majority Leader, Ibrahim Halims, during Tuesday’s plenary.
According to the Speaker, Tajudeen Abbas, the extension was necessary because the 2024 budget has not been fully implemented.
The bill was passed through voice vote and referred to the Committee on Supply for further action.
The ICIR reports that both chambers have approved a budget size of N54.99 trillion for 2025, compared to the 2024 budget size of N27.5 trillion.