The process leading to the passage of the 2026 Appropriation Bill is continuing, even as the National Assembly has postponed the resumption of plenary for the second time in two months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The legislature had initially\nscheduled plenary to resume on February 24, 2026, but that date was later\nshifted to March 5. The March 5 resumption has now been postponed again, with\nplenary expected to reconvene on March 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The repeated adjustments to the\nlegislative calendar have raised questions about the pace of proceedings.\nHowever, the National Assembly has indicated that the extended recess is\nintended to allow committees conclude the ongoing budget defence process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Bola Tinubu presented\nthe proposed \u20a658.18 trillion 2026\nAppropriation Bill<\/strong> to a joint session of the\nNational Assembly on December 19, 2025. Shortly after the presentation, both\nthe Senate and the House of Representatives passed the budget proposal for\nsecond reading on December 23, 2025, thereby fast-tracking the early stages of\nlegislative consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the Christmas recess,\nthe legislature resumed work on the budget. The Appropriation Bill subsequently\nscaled First and Second Readings and moved to the committee stage, where\ndetailed scrutiny takes place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this stage, Ministries,\nDepartments and Agencies (MDAs) appear before the respective committees of the\nNational Assembly to defend their proposed allocations and respond to questions\non budget implementation and expenditure priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This process has been ongoing\nfor several weeks and is expected to conclude before the budget returns to\nplenary for final legislative consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In January 2026, the Senate\nfixed March 17<\/strong>\nas the tentative date for final consideration and passage of the \u20a658.18 trillion 2026 budget<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier, the Senate Committee on\nAppropriations had scheduled February 2 to February\n13<\/strong> for committee-level consideration of the\nbudget estimates during a special session held in Abuja.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether the current timetable\nwill ultimately be met remains uncertain, particularly in light of the shifting\nresumption dates. What is clear, however, is that the committee stage of the\nbudget process, where the most detailed scrutiny of the appropriation proposals\noccurs, is still underway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The process leading to the passage of the 2026 Appropriation Bill is continuing, even as the National Assembly has postponed the resumption of plenary for the second time in two months. The legislature had initially scheduled plenary to resume on February 24, 2026, but that date was later shifted to March 5. The March 5 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3987","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=3987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3992,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3987\/revisions\/3992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}