The 2016 Appropriation Bill will not be signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari, pending the time when the National Assembly would make the details of the document available to the president.

After series of controversies and alterations, the Nigerian National Assembly had last week Wednesday, passed a budget of N6.06 trillion.

The document was subsequently sent to the Presidency within 24 hours of passage, by the Office of the Clerk to the National Assembly, Salisu Maikasuwa.

Exactly one week later, Nigerians still await a presidential assent to the document.

A government official however, revealed to Punch Newspapers that President Buhari hasn’t been able to sign the bill -simply because he was only sent the highlights and not the entire details of the budget.

The official was quoted to have said the President had no knowledge of the adjustments made by the National Assembly in the budget proposal.

“The President has just received the transmission of the Appropriation Bill (2016 Budget) from the National Assembly and is very anxious to sign it into law, but the National Assembly only sent in the highlights without the details of the budget.”

“Although he is anxious to sign the document so that implementation of the provisions could start immediately and ease the tension in the economy and polity, he is afraid he may later discover, when the details are sent, that what is contained therein is not implementable.”

“He wishes that the National Assembly could send the details speedily so that it could be considered for assent. Ministers are also eager that the budget be signed so they could start implementing their programmes, but they are unable to push the President to sign what has been transmitted because they also do not know what is contained in the details.”

“They are particularly worried that the year is gradually aging and the provision of the law in respect of spending the previous year’s budget is not helping matters because of the low capital provision for 2015.”

“Because of the low provision made last year for capital expenditure, spending 50 per cent of that provision for the first half of this year will make no impact on the provision of infrastructure.”

“The Budget Office cannot also work on the budget for implementation because it is the details, and not the highlights, that they convert into implementable templates for the respective MDAs.”

“The National Assembly may just have passed the bill to pass the buck to the executive and escape the wrath of the public which was gradually suspecting it of sabotage.”

The possibility of the budget proposal being assented this week is highly unlikely as the Senate is currently on Easter break while President Buhari is expected to travel to Washington, United States, for the Nuclear Security Summit and won’t be back to the country till weekend.