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Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has said that President Muhammadu Buhari is scheduled to present the proposed N19.76 trillion 2023 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly in the first week of October.

Gbajabiamila stated this, yesterday, in Abuja, while inspecting ongoing

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renovation on the main chamber of the House of Representatives, as well as the construction of the National Assembly Service Commission office.

The speaker added that the temporary chamber will be ready for use when the lawmakers resume from their annual vacation next Tuesday. He that renovation work on the main chamber started on “started in August, itt started few weeks behind time but for a good reason. So far, between August and now, giant strides have been made. “

Gbajabiamila added” you see that the old chamber have been ripped apart. The innovations are going to be like state of the art. We will at the end of the day be proud to have chamber that match the best standard all over the world. I’m quite impressed with the work so far. I will encourage them to double the pace. Because as it is, unfortunately or fortunately, this is not for the benefit of the 9th Assembly it is for the benefit of the 10th Assembly.

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“The old chamber is not going to be ready until sometimes in August 2023 so we are talking about close to year. But so far so good, we are happy and this temporary site where we will be sitting for the next 9, 10 months is honestly a far cry from where we used to be but they have done well in adapting, this used to be hearing room to a legislative chamber. Adaptation – you made a lot of innovations. We are ready to work.

“The 10th Assembly is most likely (taking off here) unless work can be accelerated but we don’t want to accelerate work and compromise quality of work. So is better late but done well, everything worth doing is worth doing well.

“So, right now they bill to open that place in August. If we are lucky and they are able to move faster and work 24/7 round the clock, may be a month or two earlier in which case the 10th Assembly will come into new chamber.”

Also, a commissioner in the National Assembly Service Commission, Bassey Olusegun Etuk, who also spoke with journalists, said the 400 capacity commission building will gulp N11.6 billion.

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According to him, “This project is the permanent site of the National Assembly Service Commission and the reasons we are moving here are various: security, proximity to the service targeted functions. Here we have enough space, we are presently at an occupied rented apartment and here we carter for all our needs.”

(Sun)