The Presidency has urged the National Assembly to suspend its ongoing break to attend to requests by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Among the requests is the supplementary budget for the 2019 general election and purchase of Tucano jests from the United States of America.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang, made the position of the Presidency known when he spoke with newsmen in Abuja.
He said failure to approve the requests would frustrate other organs of government.
Enang said: “The executive – President and ministers – will keep working with the legislature with respect due their offices and persons and keep working with them as legislators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria who make laws for the executive to execute irrespective of their individual political decisions while leaving all options open for conciliation.
“We will be praying the legislature – the leadership and membership – to consider that there are many matters of very urgent nature which are pending before the legislature and unless (they are) considered, the functioning of certain institutions of the government will be hampered.
“If you recall, a lot of the funding for the 2018 budget was budgeted to come from some external sources.
“The request for approval to raise funds from these external sources is before the legislature and unless (it is) considered, it may hamper the level of implementation. Again, before the legislature proceeded on vacation, Mr. President also laid before them the request for virement, this also will be affected.”
On the $496 million request for the purchase of 12 Super Tucano aircraft from the United States, which is due to be delivered in 2020, Enang said: “Mr. President had earlier on laid the request for the application of some security funds for the purchase of Tucano jets to fight insurgency that is still pending.
“There are also the budgets (of Federal Government departments, agencies and parastatals) which are pending.
“You remember the President laid before the National Assembly sometime in November last year, the 2018 budget.
“It was the budget of the Federal Government.
“The budgets of the Federal Government’s corporations have not yet been passed.
“The executive is very law-abiding and will not do a thing which the law requires the legislature to do: to approve first before it is done, unless it is done.
“We will be praying the legislature to consider the emergency implications of this and decide to come out of this (recess) and consider this within the period of the vacation.
“We accept that some exigencies might have caused the abridgement of the time within which they were to proceed on vacation.
“We will be working with them to ensure that we have few of these considered and passed within a time that it will still be reasonable to attain the purpose of the economy.”
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