The 2016 budget submitted to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari, cannot be passed as scheduled, owing to the inconsistencies and anomalies present therein.
After weeks on controversies that have sprung up in relation to the budget- on Tuesday, February 9, the two arms of the National Assembly affirmed that the 2016 budget contained too many errors, and as such, can’t be passed till further notice
The position of both chambers of the National Assembly was communicated to the public through Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Danjuma Goje, and his House of Representatives counterpart, Jibrin Abdulmumin.
Senator Goje said: “We are here in connection with the ongoing processing of the 2016 Budget because these two committees are the ones saddled with the production of the final copies of the budget that would be passed by the National Assembly for onward submission to Mr President for his assent and subsequent implementation.
“We want to remove all ambiguities, we want to remove all paddings. We want to produce a budget that is in line with the constitutional provision. During the budget defence, a lot of issues based on the padding of the budget, arising from over-bloated overheads and in some instances cases of over-bloated personnel cost.
“But generally, there has been a lot of issues. The appropriation committee would look at these issues after the whole budget defence and do a very thorough work aimed at doing a proper clean-up of the budget.
“So in summary, the time-table for passage of the budget is no longer realistic because as appropriation committees of both chambers of the National Assembly, we need additional time to do a thorough job for the 2016 budget.”
Speaking in the same vein, Abdulmumin said: “So we can pass a budget that is implementable and also acceptable to Nigerians. It is no longer realistic because we need sufficient time to pass a comprehensive budget.
“The President is an individual, the budget runs in thousands of pages, the President will not be able to go through it page by page.”
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