Acting President Goodluck Jonathan will finally sign the 2010 Appropriation Bill today nearly one month after it was passed by the National Assembly.

Mr. Jonathan said he delayed his assent because of some discrepancies he discovered while going through the document.

At the meeting of the Executive Council of the Federation yesterday, the acting president announced that he would only sign the budget when the issues he had raised with leadership of the National Assembly are resolved. Mr. Jonathan had met with the lawmakers at his Aguda residence on Tuesday night to work out the differences.

The delay in signing the budget was one of the major issues deliberated at the weekly council meeting which lasted for three hours. However, hours after the meeting, the Senior Special Assistant to the Acting President, Ima Niboro, said that his boss will be signing the budget at 10.00am today.

Although the statement did not say wether the acting president met with the leadership of the National Assembly after the council meeting, a source said that the issues complained about by Mr Jonathan have been resolved.

Apart from the 2010 budget, the council meeting which featured no memos, also discussed Nigeria’s Golden Jubilee celebration.

Almost all the ministers were in attendance, and some of the new ministers who have yet to understand the terrain, got lost on their way to the chambers where the meeting usually holds.

The reason for delay

Earlier, while briefing the media on the outcome of the meeting, the Minister of State for Information and Communications, Labaran Maku, promised a speedy resolution of the budget issue.

“The acting president is still studying the budget and having discussions with the leadership of the National Assembly to resolve the discrepancies. In a few days, this will be concluded and the budget will be signed probably before the end of this week.”

Mr. Jonathan, it was gathered, was not comfortable with the huge gap between the N4.07 trillion he presented to the National Assembly, and the N4.6 trillion the lawmakers approved and sent to him for assent.

“In all democrac[ies], there is always the discrepancy between what the executive gives and what the legislatures [give]. The legislatures have oversight duties on how the resources of Nigeria should be used. They have a constitutional role and there is hardly any democracy where the budget returning to executive remains the same,” said Mr. Maku.

“What the legislature does is that it looks at the areas it believes are important, which have been overlooked by the executive. And the executive, that has the constitutional duty of managing the economy, will now look at the implication of those variations in relation to the law, [and] in relation to what the national economy can afford, to ensure that what is approved generate the economy rather than creating more problems. I am sure in the end, what comes up will be for the good of Nigeria.”

He added that the acting president was concerned about the time wasted and the failure of past budgets. The minister, however, could not say which specific areas caused the discrepancies, stating that there were no figures tabled for discussion at the council meeting.

Problems in the past

On November 24, 2009, President Umaru Yar’Adua presented a budget proposal of N4.07 trillion for the 2010 fiscal year to the National Assembly. However, the budget was not passed until after four months and the country’s planned spending for the year was raised to around N4.3 trillion ($30 billion more) by the federal lawmakers.

The National Assembly eventually passed a budget of N4,608,616,278,213, of which N180,279,158,994 was for statutory transfer, while N497,071,797,452 was earmarked for debt service. N2,077,358,560,347 was billed for recurrent expenditures, and N1,853,906,761,420 was for contribution to the development fund for capital expenditure for the year ending 31 December 2010.

It was based on a projection of $67 per barrel of oil and crude oil production of 2.350 million barrels per day. The joint venture cash call projection was $7billion, with a GDP of 5.47 percent, an inflation rate of 11.2 percent, and an exchange rate of N150 to a US dollar.

The budget had included some additions and adjustments by the executive in the sum of N336 billion, which raised the executive proposal from N4, 079 trillion to N4, 415 trillion.


Golden Jubilee celebration

On the preparation of the nation’s 50th year celebration, Mr. Maku said it will be coordinated by the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF).

As part of the measures to make it an integrated national affair, the council encouraged both states and local governments to make sure their preparations complemented the federal government’s plan, in an effort to make the celebrations grand and worthy of a nation’s golden jubilee.

Link:

http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/News/Metro/Politics/5558245-146/jonathan_finally_signs_budget_today_.csp

Anxiously waiting, fingers cross, cant wait to get a feel of the start of a new dawn. . . He must have signed it by now.

Here's hoping this time around, we start getting things right in that country!