President Muhammadu Buhari has intensified efforts to get the 2016 budget passed into law without further hitches and delay by the National Assembly.

THISDAY checks monday revealed that Buhari, in a bid to ensure that all impediments surrounding the passage of the budget were laid to rest, met last Wednesday with the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Danjuma Goje, and his House of Representatives counterpart, Hon. Jibrin Abdulmumin, seeking their cooperation on the smooth passage of the Appropriation Bill.

Both chairmen last week assured Nigerians that the National Assembly would pass the budget into law on Thursday. But dissatisfaction with the budget, particularly among legislators, and curiously also among some senior officials of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of the federal government, whose budget estimates had suffered cuts by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, continued to impede the passage of the budget presented to the National Assembly since last December.

The president, according to sources in the presidency, appealed to the appropriation committee chairmen of both chambers to help him smoothen all the rough edges of the budget and lobby their colleagues to pass it into law without further delay.

When Buhari was reminded that the budget proposal had several procedural defects, including many errors as well as glaring inconsistencies in item pricing, making its passage a herculean task, Buhari reportedly pleaded for the two committee chairmen’s understanding, asking them to do all within their powers to secure its passage this week as promised.

“I recognise the difficulties posed by the mistakes and the indiscretion of our officials. But having made an open admission of this, I think it is only fair that you get your colleagues to show some understanding,” the president was quoted to have said.

Buhari, according to sources, also made concessions to Goje and Abdulmumin to use their discretion to bring the estimates in line with “the National Assembly’s estimates of what is workable and implementable”, cautioning however that fundamental changes to the budget should be brought to his attention.

“The president was so conciliatory. He asked the committee chairmen to feel free to come to him at any time they felt his attention was required,” a presidency source familiar with the meeting said.

Goje and Abdulmumin had at a joint press briefing last month stated that the budget was fraught with too many errors, making its passage very difficult.

According to Goje, “We want to remove all ambiguities and paddings with a view to producing a budget that is in line with constitutional provisions.

“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 were exposed.”

His House counterpart, Abdulmumin, agreed that the two committees would have to do a proper cleanup of the budget, adding that the task before the lawmakers was to pass a budget “that is implementable and acceptable to Nigerians”.
According to National Assembly sources, some of the discrepancies in the budget include huge differences in the prices quoted for the same items by different MDAs.

“On one particular brand of vehicle alone, we discovered a gap of almost N15 million between the lowest and highest prices quoted by different agencies and you find that on almost every item. There were also issues of arithmetical errors in which figures just do not add up,” explained a legislator.

The source added that some of the ministers, including those who publicly disowned the estimates from their ministries, came back to the committees with proposals that were also at variance with the ones submitted by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning thus creating more problems for the National Assembly.

A member of the Senate Committee however praised both Buhari and the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, for providing leadership and maturity on the issue.
He said Saraki specifically told the committees to work closely with the budget ministry so as to resolve whatever differences that might have arisen during the reconciliation of the estimates.

Source: Thisday