Shelve this protest, Senate begs youths

Ahead of the anti-bad governance protest slated to begin this Thursday, 1/8/24, across the nation, the Senate on Wednesday made a last-minute effort to halt the protest as it called on the Youths to shelve the strike.

Arising from an executive session during an emergency session, the Red Chamber noted that the administration of President Bola Tinubu needed more time for its economic measures put in place in the last one year to mature and identified the new National Minimum Wage of N70,000, the Student’s Loan implementation, among others, as policies introduced to address some of the challenges the country is facing at the moment.

Senate President, Godswill Akpabio who read the resolution taken during the closed door session pledged the willingness of the legislature to legislate on all matters that will bring succour to Nigerians citing the Bills on the South-East development commission and that of North-West as examples.

Meanwhile, both Chambers of the National Assembly during the emergency session convened today repealed and reenacted the 2024 Appropriation Act to incorporate the N6.2 trillion which was sent by President Bola Tinubu requestin the National Assembly to add to the budget on July 23 to cover funding gaps for legacy projects and the new national minimum wage of N70,000. The addition had raised the total budget figure from the initial N28.7tn to N35.055tn.

The sitting repealed the entire 2024 Act and reenacted it with the new title, “2024 Appropriation Act (Repeal and Reenactment) Bill”, passing it for first, second and third readings thereby capturing N35.055tn as the budget for 2024.

 A breakdown showed that N1.7tn was retained for statutory transfers: N8.2tn for debt service; N11.2tn for recurrent expenditure and N13.7tn for contribution to the development fund for capital projects of the federation.

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