President Muhammadu Buhari Friday, cancelled the emergency Federal Executive Council meeting which he summoned to discuss the 2016 Budget, to allow ministers rejig issues relating to budget, which came up at the National Economic Council meeting.
The President cancelled the meeting at the last minute after the ministers arrived the Presidential Villa, Abuja ahead of the 10am scheduled time of the meeting. The ministers were informed by the President’s protocol team that the meeting had been moved to Monday.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, on inquiry told journalists at the State House that the meeting was moved to allow the ministers get up to date with some of the corrections made on the 2016 Budget proposal at the National Economic Council held on Thursday.
According to him the ministers are expected to do some “rejigging of figures” and return for the meeting on Monday afternoon.
“The meeting was not cancelled. It was postponed till Monday afternoon.
“The reason is that you know there was a meeting of the National Economic Council yesterday (Thursday).
” At that meeting, many of the key cabinet members made presentations. There were some fallouts from those presentations that will necessitate going back to the original document that should have been discussed today.
“So, we were given time between now and Monday to go and rejig our figures because when the NEC met, certain issues were thrown up that if they were not resolved, would distort the entire budget proposal. So we will all go back, each ministry will do its rejigging” he said .
The FEC had at its last meeting approved the Medium Term Expenditure Framework which was forwarded to the National Assembly. The MTEF has since been approved by lawmakers .
The President is expected to present the budget to a joint session of the National Assembly, next week Tuesday.
Elizabeth Archibong
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