Federal lawmakers have announced indefinite postponement of passage of 2016 budget proposal due to strange figures and errors in the documents.
Federal lawmakers have announced indefinite postponement of passage of 2016 budget proposal due to strange figures and errors in the documents.
National Assembly had slated February 25, for the passage of 2016 budget.
However, addressing National Assembly correspondent, National Assembly Joint Committee on Appropriation, Co-chair by both Senator Danjuma Goje and Hon. Abdulmumini Jubrin said the lawmakers decided to postpone the budget passage in order for the lawmakers to do thorough job on the budget.
Jibrin explained that a lot of issues were raised during the budget Defence based on the padding of the budget arising from over bloated overhead and in some instances cases of over bloated personnel cost.
Hon Jubril said, “We are here in connection with the ongoing processing of the 2016 budget Defence and because these two committees are the one saddled with the production of the final copies of the budget that would be passed by the two houses for onward submission to Mr President for his assent and subsequent implementation and because of the observed instances that are being reported from the beginning of the budget submission there are a lot of controversies surrounding the budget.
“We feel that we have to come here, interact with you, make some clarifications that Nigerians we know the correct situation of things regarding the 2016 budget.
“We designed a timetable for the consideration and passage of the budget and that particular timetable that we will pass the budget on February 25, 2016 but as you are all aware, a lot of issues have come up and gladly so even the Executive arm of government have also come out to accept the fact that there has been a lot of errors in the budget.
“Again during the budget Defence a lot of issues based on the padding of the budget arising from over bloated overhead and in some instances cases of over bloated personnel cost. But generally there have been a lot of issues. The appropriation committee would look at these issues after the whole budget Defence to do a very thorough work aim at doing a proper cleanup of the budget.
“To liaise with all the stakeholders to enable us pass the budget that is implementable Budget that is hood from the perspective of the legislature and also acceptable to the Executive arm of the government.
“So in summary the timetable for the passage of the budget is no longer realistic because appropriation committees of both chambers of the National Assembly we need additional time to be able to do a thorough job for the 2016 budget.
“The joint committees on Appropriation wouldn’t like the budget to be thrown back to it based on some ambiguities.
“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 requirement.
“Again in terms of capital expenditure there are complaints coming from different quarters arising from the imbalance from the capital allocation and of course disagreement among the Ministers and the Civil Servants in the various ministries that we have witnessed during the period of budget Defence.
“These all together form enough bases for us to sit down and ensure that a thorough job is done before the budget is passed.”
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