National Assembly leaders: Senate President BUKOLA SARAKI and Speaker of the House YAKUBU DOGARA
Nigeria’s National Assembly to defend adjustments in budget on Friday
Following the grudges expressed by President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday while signing the 2018 budget, accusing the National Assembly of unnecessary altering the original appropriation bill, the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Appropriation have said they will hold a press conference on Friday to shed light on the adjustment they preferred in the budget.
Senate tweeted: “Tomorrow, the Chairmen of the Appropriation Committees of @NGRSenate and @HouseNGR will hold a press conference on #Budget2018 where they will provide a detailed/line-by-line explanation on all the points raised by @NGRPresident at yesterday’s budget signing”.
Nigeria’s National Assembly to defend adjustments in budget on Friday
A statement by Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Aliyu Sabi Abdulahi, said the senate is in consonance with the House of Representatives’ rebuttal to Buhari’s statement about the lawmakers’ adjustment to the budget.
Buhari, had said that the budget would not be implementable as a result of the adjustments by the lawmakers, stating that he would send a supplementary budget to the lawmakers to make up for the shortfall of the spending plan.
It is customary that the National Assembly is represented at budget signing but neither the Speaker of the House nor the Senate President or their representatives attended the budget signing on Wednesday.
The leadership of the National Assembly have also expressed reservation to the accusation by Buhari that they altered the spending documents and made it unimplementable.
The opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said Buhari’s statement on the budget was an indication that he lacked the capacity to implement a developmental budget for the country.
Buhari on Wednesday signed the country’s budget of N9.12 trillion for 2018 spending. Ministry of Power, Works and Housing has the highest budget of N682,959,550,242; followed Ministry of Transportation, N251,420,000.000. Ministry of Environment has the least budget of N17,492,955,833.
The assent is coming seven months after the spending bill was presented to the National Assembly on November 7th, 2017.
The lawmakers jerked up the original spending list send by Buhari by N578 billion, from N8.26 trillion to N9.12 trillion.
While signing the document, Buhari said he was not happy with the alteration with the original spending plan.
“A few minutes past noon today, I signed the 2018 Appropriation Bill into Law,” Buhari tweeted on Wednesday.
The Ministry of Power, Works and Housing received N682,959,550,242; Ministry of Transportation, N251,420,000.000; Ministry of Defence, N157,715,439.613; Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, N149,198,139.0 37; Ministry of Water Resources, N147,199,614,645; and Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, N105,156,176,854.Ministry of Education got N102,907,290,833; Ministry of Health, N86,482,848,198; Ministry of Environment, N17,492,955,833; and Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, N58,082,611,977.
Buhari expressed his displeasure with the National Assembly: “I am however concerned about some of the changes @nassnigeria has made to the budget proposals I presented,” Buhari said.
“The logic behind the Constitutional direction that budgets should be proposed by the Executive is that it is the Executive that knows & defines its policies and projects. Unfortunately, that has not been given much regard in what has been sent to me.”
Buhari accused the lawmakers of cutting funding up to N347 billion for 4700 projects. He said the National Assembly, instead, introduced a total of 6,403 projects amounting to N578 billion, some of which he said will be difficult to execute because they have not been properly “conceptualized, designed and costed”.
Many of the projects, according to Buhari, are critical to Nigeria’s economy and may be difficult, if not impossible, to implement with the reduced allocation.
The Guardian listed some of the projects with reduced funding below:
a. The provisions for some nationally/regionally strategic infrastructure projects such as Counter-part funding for the Mambilla Power Plant, Second Niger Bridge/ancillary roads, the East-West Road, Bonny-Bodo Road, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and Itakpe-Ajaokuta Rail Project were cut by an aggregate of 11.5 billion Naira.
b. Provisions for some ongoing critical infrastructure projects in the FCT, Abuja especially major arterial roads and the mass transit rail project, were cut by a total of 7.5 billion Naira.
c. The provision for Rehabilitation and Additional Security Measures for the United Nations Building by the FCT, Abuja was cut by 3.9 billion Naira from 4 billion Naira to 100 million Naira; this will make it impossible for the Federal Government of Nigeria to fulfil its commitment to the United Nations on this project.
d. The provisions for various Strategic Interventions in the health sector such as the upgrade of some tertiary health institutions, transport and storage of vaccines through the cold chain supply system, provision of anti-retroviral drugs for persons on treatment, establishment of chemotherapy centres and procurement of dialysis consumables were cut by an aggregate amount of 7.45 billion Naira.
e. The provision for security infrastructure in the 104 Unity Schools across the country were cut by 3 billion Naira at a time when securing our students against acts of terrorism ought to be a major concern of government.
f. The provision for the Federal Government’s National Housing Programme was cut by 8.7 billion Naira.
g. At a time when we are working with Labour to address compensation-related issues, a total of 5 billion Naira was cut from the provisions for Pension Redemption Fund and Public Service Wage Adjustment.
h. The provisions for Export Expansion Grant (EEG) and Special Economic Zones/Industrial Parks, which are key industrialization initiatives of this Administration, were cut by a total of 14.5 billion Naira.
i. The provision for Construction of the Terminal Building at Enugu Airport was cut from 2 billion Naira to 500 million Naira which will further delay the completion of this critical project.
j. The Take-off Grant for the Maritime University in Delta State, a key strategic initiative of the Federal Government, was cut from 5 billion Naira to 3.4 billion Naira.
k. About seventy (70) new road projects have been inserted into the budget of the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing. In doing so, the National Assembly applied some of the additional funds expected from the upward review of the oil price benchmark to the Ministry’s vote. Regrettably, however, in order to make provision for some of the new roads, the amounts allocated to some strategic major roads have been cut by the National Assembly.
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