SENATE
President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, will lead other senators to a crucial meeting
with President Muhammadu Buhari today to find a lasting solution to the 2016
Appropriation Bill logjam. The meeting, billed to hold last Friday, was shifted
because one of the personalities key to the meeting was out of town. Vanguard
gathered yesterday that the meeting with President Buhari had become imperative
as it would be an avenue to bring up grey areas identified in the budget and
harmonize them in the overall interest of Nigerians. Also to attend the meeting
are Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu; Senate Leader, Ali Ndume;
Deputy Senate Leader, Ibn Na’Allah; Chief Whip, Senator Olusola Adeyeye; and
Senate Deputy Chief Whip, Senator Francis Alimikhena. Others include Minority
Leader, Senator Godswill Akpabio; Deputy Minority Leader, Emmanuel Bwacha;
Minority Whip, Senator Philip Aduda, and Senate Deputy and Minority Whip,
Senator Biodun Olujimi. Also to be at the meeting are members of Appropriation
and Finance Committees of the two arms of the National Assembly. According to a
source, the Presidency is highly disappointed with the manner the 2016 budget
sent by the executive was distorted, with figures allocated to projects
reduced, thereby making it difficult for the government to perform if the
budget was assented to by the President. After today’s meeting, the Senate is
expected to softpedal on its bid to override President Buhari if he fails to
sign the budget document into law at the expiration of the stipulated 30 days,
in consonance with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended.
The source noted that the Presidency sent a 28-page budget document with every
aspect of the figures changed by the National Assembly, just as the senators,
especially chairmen of committees blamed Senator Danjuma Goje, Chairman of the
Appropriations Committee, as the brain behind the mutilation of the budget. A
member of the Appropriation Committee, who spoke with Vanguard on condition of
anonymity, said Goje and his counterpart in the House of Representatives,
Abdulmumin Jibrin, were the masterminds of the entire mess, having failed to
carry other members along. According to him, members of the committee were not
part of the appropriation process as Goje literarily left the work to Jibrin.
He added that the action explained why last week’s closed door session was
stormy and called for the removal of Goje as chairman of the committee. The
source noted that in the letter to the Senate by the Presidency, dated April
16, the President explained that there were some priority areas that were
affected in the budget which must be addressed for effective governance.
According to the source, the Presidency frowned at the housing budget which was
put at over N200 billion, but was reduced to N99 billion. The source told
Vanguard that today’s meeting with the President would resolve that the
Presidency should send in a supplementary budget, indicating areas of
differences, adding that the Senate would give them accelerated approval,
rather than resort to constitutional way of resolving the quagmire which would
not be good for the country. Padded budget Meanwhile, indications emerged,
yesterday, that the National Assembly padded the 2016 federal budget by about
N500 billion above the revenue projection and built-in deficit, thus making it
impossible for the President to implement, going by the current fiscal
situation in the country, if signed into law. Vanguard learned from sources
close to the Budget Office that “federal lawmakers went over board to raise the
budget by about N500 billion beyond the projected revenue and the deficit built
into the 2016 budget”. Those who know about happenings in the budget told
Vanguard that the budget, as presented to the President, was not
“implementable”. “The budget can not be implemented as passed by the National
Assembly,” a source said. Besides raising the budget figures, the National
Assembly members were said to have included projects such as provisions of
boreholes, town halls, football pitches as constituency projects to be funded
by the Federal Government. This, it was learned, angered the Presidency as
these are issues that states and local governments should be funding. According
to an official who knows about development in the budget, “the constituency
issues can be overlooked or at worse not implemented but there are other
fundamental issues in the budget as passed by the National Assembly. Vanguard
also learned, yesterday, that the leaderships of the Senate and the House were
not aware of these details until the President drew their attention to it. It
was upon discovery of the frivolities and the undue transfer of funds from one
budget head to another that the leadership of the National Assembly accepted to
review the budget. The President was not ready to make any issue out of it but
just requested understanding of members of the National Assembly to take a
closer look at the provisions in the budget and review the unnecessary items
and the undue transfer of funds from one budget head to another to make it easy
for the executive to implement. Besides, the National Assembly may have begun
reviewing details of the budget presented to the President last month,
following his request that anomalies noticed in the budget document be amended
to enable easy implementation. It was gathered that the two chambers of the
National Assembly have decided to set up a small committee to quickly review
the contents of the document and make necessary amendments in line with the
request of President Buhari. A senior lawmaker said the team was expected to
work closely with another team from the executive to fast-track the process and
hopefully complete work by this weekend. The leadership of the National
Assembly was scheduled to meet with the President and some relevant members of
the cabinet weekend but the meeting did not hold because of the absence of one
of the senior members of the National Assembly. Although the House of
Representatives was ready to reconsider the budget when the executive cried
foul when the details were submitted, the Senate insisted that the President
must first assent to the Bill as passed and thereafter bring forward areas of
concern in a Supplementary Bill. This position was said to have put the
President off, prompting his insistence that he could not sign a budget he
would not be able to implement. According to a source in the Presidency,
