The decision to extend the budget defence sessions and suspend plenary was arrived at after the senators held an executive session. The lawmakers had suspended plenary two weeks ago to allow the standing committees process the budget by hosting the MDAs in budget defence sessions. Our correspondent learnt that the senators at the executive session agreed to complete their work on the 2016 budget by March. The senators at the closed session, according to one of them, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, agreed to suspend plenary for one week after which the Senate Standing Committees would appear before the Committee on Appropriation to defend estimates of the parastatals under their watch. The senator said the lawmakers had no issues agreeing to the quest that the budget defence sessions be extended in view of the inconsistencies noticed in the draft estimates of budget 2016 submitted by President Muhammadu Buhari on December 22, 2015. The Standing Committees of the Senate will from February 23 start appearing before the Senate Committee on Appropriation to defend the budget of the MDAs under them. The senators also agreed that the budget defence sessions would last two weeks, after which the Senate Committee on Appropriation will fix a date to present a clean copy of the budget to the Senate at plenary. The senator said, “We all agreed that the senate committees should extend budget defence sessions by one week after which the committees would appear before the Appropriation Committee to defend the budget. The executive session was all about the budget.” The Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Danjuma Goje, said in view of the chaos, difficulties, padding and confusion encountered in the course of budget defence in the past two weeks, the process had been complicated. He therefore requested one week for the sub-committees to conclude the budget defence. His request was granted and consequently, the Senate suspended plenary for another one week. The chamber will resume plenary on February 23.]]>