As Nigeria's Senate Passes 2016 Budget

The Senate on Wednesday passed the 2016 Appropriation budget of N6.07 trillion.

This came with a complaint by the Senate Committee on Appropriation about the omission of‎ some agencies from the budget.

However, the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriation, Senator Danjuma Goje,‎ said the service wide votes will take care of the omission of workers’ salary in the 2016 budget.

After so much buck passing, Senate passed the 2016 budget. 

Delay in passing the budget has stalled execution of several projects as the one initially presented by President Muhammadu Buhari was full of errors and believed to be inflated by some officials of MDAs which embarrassed him greatly, the event led to the transfer of key officers at the Ministry of Budget and Planning. 

Goje explained that the budget has already been harmonized by both chambers before presenting it.

He pointed those irregularities to be late presentation by the Executive, inconsistencies by Ministries, Departments and Agencies, inadequacy of revenue to simulate the economy as well as omission on personnel cost.

In his report, Goje recommended that the subsequent budget should be brought to the National Assembly by the Executive in strict compliance with the processes so as to reduce volume of errors and to avoid instances where Ministers will deny knowledge of figures of the affected agencies as presented by the budget office.

He added that government should shore up Capital Expenditure by reducing Recurrent Expenditure for massive infrastructural development of the nation.

“Mr. President, Distinguished Colleagues, at this juncture, I want to recommend that subsequent budget should be brought in strict compliance with the procedure so that we will not see Ministers denying their own budget before Committee on Appropriations,” Goje added.