The controversy trailing the 2016 budget is alleged to have arisen over the Presidency’s refusal to work with an ad-hoc committee chaired by Deputy Senate President Ike Ekeweremadu.
According to Vanguard, an ad-hoc committee led by the Deputy Senate President and the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives had in previous administrations, supervised works on the budget and corrected issues of concern.
The committee is made up of director-general of the Budget Office, senior officials of the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Presidency and the chairmen of the Senate and House Committees on Appropriation.
However, owing to the issues surrounding the election of National Assembly, which saw Ekweremadu – a member of the opposition – emerge as the DSP, the Presidency had refused to work with him, hence the budget crisis.
According to Vanguard, a source privy to the issue said: “It was the work of that committee to clean the budget and address all issues of concern between the executive and legislative branches of government and all issues that erupted were quietly settled under the guidance of the Deputy Senate President and the Deputy Speaker.”
“For the past eight years, Senator Ike Ekweremadu was involved, but you know as a result of the issues around his emergence, nobody in the Presidency wanted to deal with him and you can see that committee was not formed and you see how we ran into this problem,” the source was quoted to have said.
