The 2017 budget will be ready for presidential assent next week, Senate Leader Ahmad Lawan has assured.
Lawan gave the assurance in an interview with State House reporters after his meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday.
President Muhammadu Buhari presented the budget document to the legislators on December 14 last year.
For over four months the budget process
was bottled up at committee levels owing to the frosty relationship
between the legislature and the executive.
The situation worsened after the recent
police raid at the residence of the chairman of the Senate committee on
appropriation, Danjuma Goje.
But the Senate leader told reporters
there was nothing to worry about the reported carting away of the budget
documents during the police raid. The police returned the items
yesterday.
He said the trauma suffered by Goje following his house raid had hindered the Senate’s desire to pass the budget this month.
He said: ‘The National Assembly had
intended to pass the budget in March, but because some of the parameters
we had little or no control over, we couldn’t pass it in March. It was
our desire and design to pass it within this month.
“But somehow, something happened; the
chairman, senate committee on appropriations Senator Goje was raided by
the police after a whistle blower gave information and part of those
documents that were taken it was reported (that) part of the budget
papers were also included.
“And other things that happened,
essentially the trauma that the chairman had to go through affected the
process of budgeting that we had been trying to do.
“The good news is that we are doing
everything possible to ensure that we catch up the lost time and
thinking that by next week, by the grace of God, we should be able to
finish our own work and pass the budget to Mr President to sign.”
The government is currently running on last year’s budget but that grace will expire on Friday next week.
Unless the budget is passed within that time the government will be heading for a partial shutdown.
By then it will not be able to fund capital vote and will only spend 60 percent of recurrent vote.
N7.298 trillion budget is benchmarked
at N305 naira against one US dollar ($1), daily crude oil production of
2.2 million barrels and oil price of $42 per barrel.
The 2016 budget faced controversies including the ‘budget padding’ issue, which delayed assent by President Muhammadu Buhari.
On February 24, 2016, President Buhari
revealed that some “entrenched interests” illegally altered the 2016
national budget he presented to the National Assembly.
During budget defence month, outrageous
figures were discovered to have found their way into the 2016 budget
with some ministers telling committee members the document before them
were not the approved estimates they presented.
President Buhari, who was at that time
addressing the members of the Nigerian Community in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia, vowed to “severely punish” all those that tinkered with budget
document.
He said: “The culprits will not go
unpunished. I have been a military governor, petroleum minister,
military Head of State and headed the Petroleum Trust Fund. Never had I
heard the words “budget padding.”
The president said it was disappointing and embarrassing that some people padded the budget.
President Buhari later sacked the then
Director - General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Bright Okogu
and replaced him with Tijjani Abdullahi.
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