Why Buhari Can't Implement 2016 Budget - Presidency

THE presidency has declared the 2016 Appropriation Bill submitted to President Muhammadu Buhari last week by the National Assembly as a heavily altered document that is not implementable.

A top government official in the presidential villa, yesterday, confirmed that Buhari has been persuaded not to sign the budget until the alterations noticed in the document were critically reviewed and amended appropriately.

Following the receipt of the bill, Buhari, on Friday, summoned an extraordinary meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) which began the review of the fiscal document. According to the source, the president had wanted to go ahead and sign the budget after receiving it and then return to the National Assembly with the altered sections, but has been advised otherwise.

The source said: “He has been advised not to sign the budget. He wanted to sign it and go back to National Assembly, but he has been persuaded not to sign at this time until the review exercise by the cabinet members is completed.

“The budget, as passed by the National Assembly, is not implementable. Imagine that the lawmakers will cancel very serious projects like roads and replace them with Keke NAPEP, a tricycle.

“They will move a project from the South, for instance, in the budget and take it to the North.
It makes nonsense of the entire document and derails the focus of the administration to deliver on people-oriented projects.”

According to the source, “the document is more than 1,000 pages. It is being read page by page by the cabinet members. “The problem is that it has been substantially altered. So, the president has suspended his signature until the review exercise is completed.”

Buhari, who is worried about the development, yesterday met with his vice, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, and the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, before departing for the Republic of China.

Our correspondent gathered that the president, during the meeting, gave a clear directive to the vice president, who is coordinating the budget review process, to remain focused. Some ministers said yesterday that they have submitted their observations and review of their ministries’ budget to the Minister of Budget and National Planning.

“I submitted my observations to the Minister of Budget and National Planning on Saturday. We reviewed the initial proposal for the fiscal year and what the parliament approved,” one of the minister said.
Specifically, the altered areas in the budget which the presidency considers unacceptable are funds proposed for key infrastructure projects, but which were either removed from the budget or slashed drastically by the National Assembly as shown in the details presented to the president.

One of the projects is the Coastal Railway project, which the president plans to discuss with the Chinese government during his one-week long visit in Beijing. Government earmarked N60 billion counterpart funds for it, but the National Assembly removed it completely from the budget details.

The Presidency also found that the National Assembly expunged the Calabar–Lagos rail line project from the budget details, reduced allocation to the completion of Idu-Kaduna rail project by N8.7 billion and slashed allocations for the completion of all major road projects across the country.

The National Assembly rather proposed new roads for which studies have not been conducted and dropped proposals for the purchase of essential drugs for major health campaigns like Polio and HIV/AIDS.

The lawmakers also cancelled or reduced allocations for diversification projects under Agriculture and Water Resources and diverted funds to rural health facilities and boreholes projects for which provisions had been made elsewhere.

But, Deputy Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Sonni Ogbuoji (PDP, Ebonyi South), said it was the constitutional responsibility of the National Assembly, an
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