The temporary chamber will be ready for use when the lawmakers return from their annual vacation on Tuesday.
President Muhammadu Buhari is expected to present the proposed N19.76 trillion 2023 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly in the first week of October, according to the House of Representatives Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila.
Gbajabiamila made this statement on Wednesday in Abuja while inspecting the work being done on the National Assembly Service Commission office as well as ongoing renovations to the House of Representatives' main chamber.
The temporary chamber will be ready for use when the lawmakers return from their annual vacation on Tuesday, the Speaker said. According to the SUN, Gbajabiamila stated that the main chamber renovations began in August, "a few weeks behind time but for a good reason. So far, between August and now, giant strides have been made”.
The Speaker added, “You see that the old chamber has been ripped apart. The innovations are going to be state-of-the-art.
“We will at the end of the day be proud to have a chamber that matches 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.
“The old chamber is not going to be ready until sometime in August 2023 so we are talking about close to a 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 a 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 the quality of work. So it’s better late but done well, everything worth doing is worth doing well.”
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.
“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 cater for all our needs,” he said.