The Buhari administration has been very embarrassed by criticisms that have greeted the proposed 2016 budget, and has vowed to deal with top civil servants responsible for smuggling frivolous allocations into the budget, a senior administration official within the presidency has told PREMIUM TIMES.
According to the official, those involved in the fraudulent padding of the costs of budgeted items, or wholesale injection of questionable line items into the proposed budget, face imminent sack.
The source, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, said top civil servants who have constituted themselves into a “budget mafia” were responsible for deviously inserting over-priced line items into the budget, thereby exposing the presidency to ridicule.
Besides its huge deficit, the 2016 budget proposal has been widely criticised for its failure to depart from a well-known tradition of wasteful allocation of funds that characterised past budgets.
Several news reports have shown the proposed budget to be replete with over-priced allocations, repetitions of line items and spending surprisingly skewed to the advantage of top government officials.
On Tuesday, a PREMIUM TIMES’ analysis of the budget revealed that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration had proposed to spend more on capital projects at the State House Medical Centre, than it would spend on all 16 university teaching hospitals in Nigeria.
The presidency proposed to spend N3.87 billion on capital projects at the hospital, which is only used by the families of the President and Vice President, their personal staff and few privileged government officials. The amount is N787million more than the cumulative capital allocation to all 16 teaching hospitals.


Our source said from the outset, the top bureaucrats, who are adept in “systemic corrupt practices” were bent on scuttling the President Muhammadu Buhari’s avowed financial prudence during the preparation of the budget.
“After learning that the presidency was considering a large budget of possibly N8 trillion in order to significantly increase capital expenditure, bureaucrats brought a proposal of N9.7 Trillion for overhead and capital spending even without personnel spending,” the source said.
“Of the proposed N9.7 Trillion, the bureaucrats planned to spend an alarming N3 Trillion on overhead alone, but the presidency eventually slashed this to N163B lower by 8% than 2015 budget which was N177B, indicating massive cut of some of the main provisions by the Buhari presidency.
“Bureaucrats also proposed to spend N2.1 Trillion on personnel for the 2016 estimates compared to about N1.8 Trillion in the 2015 budget. But the presidency also cut this down to N1.7 Trillion in the final estimates sent to the legislature.”
According to the source, despite efforts by the president to cut out the excesses in the budget, these “Budget Mafia” were relentless in their resolve to smuggle in dubious items into the budget.
“The situation and its fallout were so bad that it provoked the annoyance of the president who nonetheless kept his cool buying time so as to meet the target date for the presentation of the budget in line with extant laws and regulations governing the budget process.
“For weeks after the minister was sworn in, the bureaucrats kept planning on the old budget model, stalling the decision to use the Zero-Based Budget until the new Minister found out from the presidency. This stalling led to the waste of valuable time and sources said the bureaucrats had calculated that once time becomes of essence, the presidency would be forced to abandon the Zero-Based Budget.
“However, the presidency regrouped the budget planning efforts around the concept of Zero-Based Budget by early December when the Budget Minister now aware of the Zero-Based Budget took control and leadership of the process.
“Experts and consultants disclosed over the weekend that even after that some of the bureaucrats did not cooperate taking longer than required time to come back with revisions to their estimates that were recommended and ratified by the presidency. In the process many of the provisions already marked down for revision simply got snuck in, effectively pushing the presidency in the defensive in the backlash in the public arena.”

Source:
http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/198079-presidency-blames-budget-mafia-controversial-allocations-2016-budget-vows-sanctions.html

Really

Blaming Buhari's Gofmant Of Blemishies!
Dullness no good oooooooh!

Welcome to Nigeria….. land of blame, “when your girl dump you then blame GEJ and past administration” and “when rat eat your certificate..you blame GEJ and past administration”
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Nairaland official comedian

From FeBUHARI to FailedBUHARI.

then March4BUHARI to Moan4BUHARI

Kai!

Keneking abeg were Lalasticlala dey sef!
Buhari oooooooooooooooooooooooooh!

Who are bureaucrats?

m

Keneking:
Who are bureaucrats?

See one of them below

Looking for a Scapegoat. Useless Government.

When will this man become man enough to take responsibilities for wrong doings when he is clearly wrong and not blame others. Truth is, if that budget was not criticised but praised, one would have seen him dancing and taking the whole glory without bothering to tell us who prepared the budget. Even with this blame he becomes more guilty of negligence or pure incompetency. Was he not the one that authorised it. Before appending his signature, didn't he take out time to go through it or seek interpretation if there was anything he didn't understand. Even his supporters know this man is useless but sentiment won't allow them to be human instead of remaining his robots.

And the blaming continues
SMH

Which one is budget mafia kwa, this man is never ready for governance always apportioning blame. Na waoh

Blames

Admit it Buhari is dumb!

g

Is this Buhari dat I voted for?

Hmmmm

Did presidential spokespeople release anything concerning this, No. That's the problem with the media these days, this was meant to be an in-house thing and "source " is releasing vital information. Yet wailers will blame it on Buhari.

This is an admission of failure if some cabal are responsible for budgeting billions for the frivolities we witness in the budget without our presido having knowledge of it.

Say God!

Jonathan own nah the Cabal, Buhari own nah budget mafia.. . Our leaders will just be looking for ghosts to blame

Lol, Budget Mafia indeed. Booohari no get eye to see the funny allocations by himself before he came to present it?

Abi no be eye and sense we the normal people take see everything? Rubbish!

If Nigerians had kept quiet and accepted it, there would be nothing like budget Mafia but now that people are talking, they have formulated a budget Mafia to blame some people.

ALL BLAME GOES TO BOOOOOOHARI FOR NOT QUESTIONING THE OBVIOUSLY INFLATED BUDGET IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Lol
Neighbor, have you blamed someone today?

lol.. i thought Adeshina was defending the budget as if his life depended on it

I don't believe this story. How come the so call budget mafia has not been arrested to face trial for economic sabotage? There is no need to tell more lies to cover the glaring plan to defraud Nigeria via 2016 budget.

.This is officially the most stvpid,useless and most dumb president ever



Dafuq we did to deserve this bullcrap of a kunu sipping.. Cow rustling bastard at the helm of affairs of our beloved country


Mehn the blame game is getting fucking boring and I wonder who's gonn be next to blame.....


Mr kunu-sipping, cow-rustling, west German presido.... Shut dafuq up and fix this fucking economy.... Dollar is at its peak, ND militants are blowing up oil pipelines, BH are on the parol and the only fvcking thing you can do is blame GEJ,God,IBB, Nigerians,Senate,Civil servants etc


Fvcktards back off and don't bother quoting

Really??

So after piloting the affairs of this country alone for over 5months with heads of different ministries and departments being sacked daily and replaced with Buhari's trusted ppl, we still have budget mafias in this government? Someone tell me our president was joking..

But isn't this budget brouhaha justifying the actions of those that criticized why Buhari took ages to appoint his ministers? Still, it doesn't look like he did much getting rid of the mafias.. Well, still waiting for him to suck one of the Saints in his cabinet... Lai comes in ma mind..

People are paid to scrutinize the budget before the President signs, so as not to embarrass the govt. Everyone is busy stealing in aso rock, no time to settle down to work. If una like don't pay federal health workers their December and January salaries, take all the money to pay doctors in the UK

Game of Blame(season 1)

omogin:
People are paid to scrutinize the budget before the President signs, so as not to embarrass the govt. Everyone is busy stealing in aso rock, no time to settle down to work. If una like don't pay federal health workers their December and January salaries, take all the money to pay doctors in the UK

Hmmmm nice one but you ended it all with the dumbest line I've ever read on this forum

Sister why

What arrant nonsense
A politician is a politician PMB inclusive!

Am short of words to describe the garbage stories that emanate from the so called presidency, this is totally unacceptable and unprofessional

Me too de ask same tin

buzquet:
Is this Buhari dat I voted for?