Jonathan may sign 2014 budget today

There are indications that President Goodluck Jonathan may sign the 2014 Appropriation Bill today, following far-reaching deliberations and agreements made so far by both the executive and legislature on the over-delayed budget.

President Jonathan had accused the law makers of again distorting the N4.642 trillion Bill he sent to them for appropriation, including raising the estimated total spend for the year by some N53 billion to N4.695 trillion.

BusinessDay was told that both the executive and legislature are now locked up in trying to reconcile the figures to an implementable level and that discussions have gone quite far.

A reliable source said substantial progress had been made by both arms of government to resolve those gray areas/distortions inputted into the budget by the National Assembly that had made it difficult for the President to approve, and according to him, there is now willingness on both sides to quickly arrive at a resolution and get the already delayed budget up running.
“We are waiting for the final feedback from the National Assembly on some of the contentious areas.
“Depending on what happens, the budget may be signed as early as Friday,” the source said.
He explained that the budget, after it was received from the National Assembly, was sent to the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to study and find out areas adjustments have been made that are particularly inimical to achieving the objectives intended.
“The budget bill is not a rubber stamp,” the source admitted though, adding that, “at the same time, it is important that certain key projects are not compromised or sabotaged.”
According to him, that process has been concluded, but while it was going on, there were also a lot of informal meetings between the relevant committees of the National Assembly and the executive (budget office and finance etc) to try to resolve some of these issues.
Nigeria’s budget, year after year, runs into controversy and poor implementation, mainly as a result of getting the executive and legislature to agree on the benchmarks, spending levels for various projects.
Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, recently, confirmed the position of the President, noting that, “it is very sad that we have almost entered the middle of the year and we don’t have a budget.
“This indeed is sad that the budget has taken so long in coming and practically we have less than seven months to execute the budget.
“”There are few areas of distortion and they are those areas that are very serious and we think there is a need to look into them because of the negative impact those distortions may have on the implementation of the budget,” the minister had told reporters after the Federal Executive Council meeting penultimate week.