The National Assembly on October 21 commenced assessment of the 2021 Appropriation Bill, which was presented by President Muhammadu Buhari in a joint session of the Assembly on October 8. Both chambers of the Assembly have suspended plenary to scrutinise the budget proposals, with ministries, departments and agencies of government appearing before committees of the Assembly to defend their respective budgets. Following this, the defence sessions of several committees handling critical matters have been brought to the fore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a session of the Senate Committee on Power, it was\ndiscovered that no fund was allocated for the Mambilla power project in the\n2021 budget; raising questions about the government\u2019s prioritisation of the\nproject, which has dragged on for several years. The hydroelectric power\nproject is expected to be the largest power generation installation in Nigeria\nif implemented. Meanwhile, the committee\u2019s counterpart in the House of\nRepresentatives criticised the categorisation of electricity consumers in the\ncountry into bands, by electricity distribution companies. According to the\nChairman of the committee, Hon. Magaji Aliyu, the development constitutes a\nform of segregation and inhibits equitable distribution of power to consumers\nacross Nigeria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nigeria has continued to grapple with power supply for\ndecades. Over the past several weeks, the Federal Government suspended the\nimplementation of a new service-reflective electricity tariff system it had previously\nunveiled, following threats of industrial strike action by trade unions.\nHowever, the government has approved the resumption of the revised tariff\nregime from November 2020, while announcing the commencement of the distribution\nof free electricity metres to serve an estimated 30 million consumers, to address\nthe deficit of 6.5 million metres in Nigeria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a defence session of the Senate Committee on Aviation on\nOctober 27, the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika revealed that the Federal\nGovernment\u2019s plan for the aviation sector is topped by the take-off of a\nnational carrier for Nigeria in 2021, even as it undertakes the construction of\n10 new airports nationwide. Meanwhile, the committee conducted a public hearing\nfor six aviation sector bills from November 2 to November 4. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The House of Representatives Committee on Healthcare\nServices at its session called on Nigerians to scrutinise the kind of drugs\nthey purchase and consume following the looting of a warehouse belonging to the\nNational Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), where\nconfiscated drugs were stored. However, the committee rejected the budget\npresentations of four agencies under its supervision, describing the proposals\nas poorly prepared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Senate Committee on Interior suspended its budget\ndefence session, owing to the aftermath of the #EndSARS protests, which\naffected some of the agencies under its purview. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The National Assembly on October 21 commenced assessment of the 2021 Appropriation Bill, which was presented by President Muhammadu Buhari in a joint session of the Assembly on October 8. Both chambers of the Assembly have suspended plenary to scrutinise the budget proposals, with ministries, departments and agencies of government appearing before committees of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[171],"class_list":["post-1788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nass-goes-into-budget-defence-sessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1792,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788\/revisions\/1792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}