The Senior Special Assistant to the President on National
Assembly Matters (Senate), Ita Enang, has retracted his
earlier comments that Acting President Yemi Osinbajo
cannot sign the 2017 budget.
Enang told State House correspondents that the Acting
President has the constitutional power to assent to the bill
once he is satisfied with the content, shortly after he
presented the budget to Osinbajo.
He recalled that Osinbajo had in February during President
Muhammadu Buhari’s first medical vacation of the year
signed some bills into law. in his capacity as the Acting
President.
While saying there is a window of 30 days within which the
document can either be signed or returned to the National
Assembly, Enang said it would be insurmountable as of now to say
when the document would be signed into law.
The presidential aide said, “The budget as passed by the
National Assembly has just been transmitted to the Acting
President. I just delivered it.
“Let me use this opportunity to clarify an issue. The Acting
President has the power to assent to the budget and he will
assent to it when the processes are completed.
“The Acting President has the power to assent to the
budget. In February, he assented to seven or eight bills.
Those that he didn’t agree with, he wrote the Senate and
House of Representatives that he had withheld his assent
from them.
“He has the power of the President to assent to it. But the
assent to the Appropriation Bill will be after the completion
of the standard operation process. The bill has 30 days to
which it will be assented to but the process can be
completed within two or three days.
“So, it is not possible to say it will be assented to in so, so
and so day or in two or three days. It is upon the
completion of the process that it will be assented to by the
President and the President here now is the Acting
President.”
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