Senate won’t revisit 2016 Budget on omissions 

The Senate today ruled out revisiting the 2016 Appropriation Bill for the purpose of capturing any omissions made by the executive in the draft document it sent to the National Assembly for approval.

Instead, the Upper Chamber advised President Muhammadu Buhari to comply with the provisions of the constitution by signing the bill as passed by the legislative body and forward supplementary appropriations later to cover omissions recorded in the money bill.

Senate Spokesperson, Senator Aliyu Sabi, stated this while briefing journalists after plenary on the controversies surrounding the 2016 budget.

Sabi, however, explained that Monday’s statement by the Red Chamber should not be interpreted as a confrontation to the executive arm but rather a clarification on the true state of affairs pertaining to the issues raised by the Presidency on the bill.

“Like you will recall, I issued a press statement yesterday on behalf of the Senate to make our position very clear with respect to the issue of the budget. I also want to make it very clear that we issued that statement simply to clarify the situation and not to confront any authority nor to threaten anybody.

“Now what we issued remains our position. Today all we did was to confirm what exactly are the true pictures of these situations and in my capacity as Spokesman of the Senate, I did not go to press with falsehood”.

He further noted that the Senate discussed the issues of the budget and the smooth workings of the Senate during its closed-door session that lasted for 50 minutes.

“We have resumed plenary having come back from our recess and of course we went into executive session which is the normal practice to welcome one another and discuss issues that we believe pertain to the burning issues on ground, in this case the issue of the 2016 budget and the smooth workings of the Senate and the National Assembly”, Sabi said.

The lawmaker also maintained the earlier position of the Senate that the Calabar-Lagos rail project was not in the original document submitted to the National Assembly.

He stated that the Senate was sensitive to the plights of Nigerians and would always receive supplementary appropriations from the executive whenever it brought such on any imported projects omitted in the main budget.

“I want to assure you that the senate is not unmindful of the cries of Nigerians; that we said for example the Lagos-Calabar rail project was not in the budget does not in any way undermine the fact that it is a very important project for this nation to embark on.

“And so, the National Assembly, the senate is open if the executive brings a supplementary appropriations with respect to these and any other issue that they feel very strongly about, we are ready and willing to consider such but the most important point to note is that we want to remain guided by the provisions of the constitution”, he stated.

He said that passing the budget by the National Assembly was only the first step in the budget process, pointing out that the lawmakers were going to enter into the second stage of oversight.

“Now, one thing that is obvious is that yes, we have passed the budget; Nigerians are asking what next for us, what is important now is for the budget to be signed. The constitution has taken note of this kind of scenario where you may have omissions or shortfalls of allocations and section 81 of the constitution is very clear on what you need to do which is to sign the budget and then submit a supplementary appropriation.

“I think if we do that, all these raging controversies will be up our back and we can all concentrate and put our energies to begin the process of implementing the 2016 budget so that those dividends of democracy: the youth unemployment issue, the empowerment of women, the social intervention programme, the infrastructural programmes, will be addressed the agricultural programmes, the rains are already here and all the other projects that we know will kick start the Nigerian economy can begin to be implemented.

“Remember we passed the budget as not ended our responsibility, we are going to move into the second phase of our responsibility, which is oversight. So we want to appeal to Nigerians that the senate is committed to doing its work diligently, it’s committed to listening to the yearnings of Nigerians and to do what is right”, he said.

Recall that the Senate came hard on the Presidency on Monday when it reacted to insinuations in the media, where it was alleged that President Buhari said that he would not sign the budget because the National Assembly mutilated the bill.

 

OWEDE AGBAJILEKE