President Muhammadu Buhari has refused to
sign 2016 budget passed by the Senate
As the face-off between the presidency and
the Senate over the 2016 budget continues to
linger, President Muhammadu Buhari has
reportedly employed former Senate President
Ken Nnamani and one-time Speaker of the
House of Representatives and Katsina State
Governor Aminu Bello Masari to assist in
resolving the crisis.
According to The Nation newspaper, both
Nnamani and Masari said the president was
right not to have signed the budget since key
projects were removed by the Senate but
urged him to settle the rift between the two
arms of government quickly as a meeting
between the President and the lawmakers is
expected to hold this week.
“Budget is an area where we practise what
we call co-management between the
National Assembly and the executive branch
of government; both of them co-manage the
economy through the budget. It’s a peculiar
area; both of them will have to cooperate
and collaborate for a proper budget to be
passed and once it is passed, it becomes
law. “So, as it stands today, the situation is such
that the National Assembly has to do what is
called introspection. How did we get to where
we are now? The year is running out and we
are still talking about 2016 budget; where is
the fault from?
“Wherever it is coming from, both the
executive and the legislature must find a
quick solution to it. It does nobody good to
drag it any longer. Remember it is an area of
co-management; it is not left to the
executive alone, it is not left to the National
Assembly alone, there has to be
collaboration.
“I think it stands to reason, what I suggested
is being studied, I think it is appropriate,”
Nnamani was quoted.
On his part, Mr Masari said “I said it before
and I am saying it again, there was a time
Katsina State was entirely dependent on its
natural resources. Those resources are still
there and I believe that we are sensitising the
general public and the world to know that
there are lots of opportunities in Katsina and
in Kastina, with proper investment, we believe
we can make it; we believe we can survive on
the natural resources and agriculture and
other resources that abound in Nigeria.
“So that is why we have tagged this
“Economic and Development Summit” but
also we are refocusing to encourage our own
local investors, those who have N100,000 to
invest can make more money than leaving
the money in the bank.
“Essentially, our focus will be on agriculture
and agriculture of selected crops and we are
focusing on the natural ginger,
“We are focusing on the area of irrigated
agriculture in the area of rice, cotton and
other crops. We also have gold and diamond
in Katsina but what we can lay our hands
now is in the area of agriculture.”
President Buhari declined to sign the budget
after identifying various insertions by the
lawmakers as well as the exclusion of some
“legacy” projects, especially the Calabar-
Lagos rail project.

Source: https://www.naij.com/810766-presidency-vs-senate-president-buhari-runs-ken-nnamani-bello-masari-help.html

The 8th Senate cannot hold the President and the entire Nigerians into ransom.
Why would they remove a substantiated project like the Rail linking Lagos to Calabar and the senators representing those constituency kept mum.
8th Senate is full of thugs and greedy people- Ex President Olusegun Obasanjo

Dear Buhari the National Assembly is an independent arm of government. .

This is democracy.. Call all assembly members to a nice meal in Aso villa and resolve this issue amicably

2017 is almost here and 2016 budget isn't signed.


When a dullard rules, the masses suffer.

SamuelAnyawu:
Dear Buhari the National Assembly is an independent arm of government. .

This is democracy.. Call all assembly members to a nice meal in Aso villa and resolve this issue amicably.

You made a sound point & should be the way way out of the impasse, unfortunately, these people's "needs" exceeds the country's income...

The only way forward is for 8th assembly of criminals to include the expunged projects and removed all unconstitutionally inserted constituency projects. Seems the lawbreakers may want to trade off their constituency projects with FG expunged projects and use that as leverage for negotiation. I know PMB will want to stand his ground and he is right to do so. While the lawbreakers too may love to maintain the status quo of age long corruption which OBJ allowed, watered by Yar'dua and nurtured and pampered by GEJ.