After weeks of reconciliation of figures, President Goodluck Jonathan Friday finally signed the 2014 Appropriation Bill into law.
The brief signing ceremony was held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, before the President left for Pretoria, South Africa for talks with African leaders on how to combat terrorism on the continent.
The Senate and House of Representatives had over a month ago separately passed N4.6 trillion budget for 2014 fiscal year, a situation which made harmonisation unnecessary.
However, since the passage, the President declined to assent to it.
Justifying the delay in Presidential assent, Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, had told State House correspondents that there was need to reconcile the figures passed.
According to him, the figure presented by the Executive was different from the one passed by the National Assembly as it increased by over N50 billion.
As at the time of filling this report, the exact figure signed by the President could not be ascertained.
Speaking to State House correspondents, Presidential Media Adviser, Reuben Abati said Okonjo-Iweala was not around when the President signed the budget two days ago, hence the need to formally hand over to her.
He said, “The President actually signed the 2014 Budget two days ago. But you know that the Minister of Finance was not in town. So he needed to hand over to her and the Director Budget for onward transmission.
“That was what he did today. The ministry will be addressing the press in the next one hour”.
