2016 Budget Can’t Be Passed Because It Is Full Of Errors – NASS

national assembly

The two arms of the National Assembly (NASS), yesterday, declared that the 2016 budget was full of errors and can therefore not be passed on February 25 as earlier promised.

Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Danjuma Goje, and his House of Representatives counterpart, Jibrin Abdulmumin, who disclosed this at a briefing, said the budget was fraught with too many errors, which had made its passage into law impossible.

“We are here in connection with the ongoing processing of the 2016 Budget because these two committees are the ones saddled with the production of the final copies of the budget that would be passed by the National Assembly for onward submission to Mr President for his assent and subsequent implementation,” Sen. Goje said.

“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 provision. 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.

“But generally, there has been a lot of issues. The appropriation committee would look at these issues after the whole budget defence and do a very thorough work aimed at doing a proper clean-up of the budget.

“So in summary, the time-table for passage of the budget is no longer realistic because as appropriation committees of both chambers of the National Assembly, we need additional time to do a thorough job for the 2016 budget,” Goje said.

Also speaking, the House Chairman on Appropriation Committee, Abdulmumin, agreed that the two committees would have to do a proper clean up of the budget. “So we can pass a budget that is implementable and also acceptable to Nigerians. It is no longer realistic because we need sufficient time to pass a comprehensive budget.

“The President is an individual, the budget runs in thousands of pages, the President will not be able to go through it page by page,” Abdulmumin said.