NASS to return ‘corrected’ 2016 budget to presidency today

The reconciliation committee of the National Assembly, set up to work on the controversial 2016 budget, is set to return the corrected bill to the Presidency on Saturday, April 30.

The committee, which was chaired by the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Suleiman Lasun, has worked on the budget for the past two days.

Lasun’s committee is expected to meet with the committee set up by the presidency, which is chaired by the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma.

Both committees will then examine the details of the bill.

The decision to create the committees was reached after Wednesday’s meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and the principal officers of the National Assembly.

Speaking on the development, a senior official at the National Assembly stated that the Lasun led committee had worked overnight to ensure that the bill is ready.

The source stated that: “The Deputy Speaker and the other committee members slept at the secretariat on Thursday.”

“They will likely sleep there today again (Friday) because their plan is to ensure that the budget details, as corrected, will reach Mr. President on Saturday.”

“The President wants the original figures retained because he feels the cuts will affect the implementation of the projects the funds were meant to serve.”

“Any cut that is up to 40 per cent will be reduced. Of course, this will still not affect the overall budget size of N6.06tn. What will happen is that we will juggle round the details and adjust the smaller figures but still retain the N6.06tn.”

“Distortions that crept into the budget will be removed to get the document ready for Presidential assent hopefully by Tuesday, next week.”

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