• Friday, March 29, 2024
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BusinessDay

MDAs enticing committees to beat budget defence deadline

Senate

With the National Assembly billed to resume on Tuesday, some ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) are said to be seriously enticing committees to hurriedly adjust the schedule to enable them appear to defend their budget in order to beat the October 30 deadline.

Sources within the National Assembly disclosed that already, some heads of the MDAs that are yet to appear have made frantic attempts to reach chairmen of the committees with perks so that their presentations would be rescheduled within the budget defence timeframe.

It was further gathered that some of the committees have hurriedly fixed to receive the MDAs on Tuesday which is the deadline, and there is serious possibility that not all the agencies would have the opportunity to make their presentations because they are many.

Particularly in the Senate, there are well over 600 MDAs that were billed to defend their budget before the 68 committees of the upper legislative chamber. As at Friday, it was gathered that only about 75 percent of the MDAs have showed up to defend their budget.

Some MDAs that appeared were turned back due to absence of their heads. The committees hinged their action on the reason that they would not attend to managers of the agencies in representative capacity.

The National Assembly had adjourned for two weeks to pave the way for budget defence by MDAs and had also fixed resumption on October 29.

Senate President Ahmad Lawan had explained that the adjournment was to hasten the passage of the 2020 budget and to revert to January-December budget cycle.

According to the timetable, Lawan announced that budget defence by MDAs which began on Wednesday, October 16 was to last till October 30.

Consequently, the Senate president insisted that any head of MDA that could not appear before the committees for the budget defence on the assigned date “should not come again and at such, consider its budget not defended”.

“We have earmarked the month of October to be the sole window for all budget defence activities in this year, by all MDAs,” Lawan had stated. “In this regard, our committees will be expected to conclude their work on budget defence within October this year. The subsequent necessary legislative work will be carried out in November and December, leading to eventual passage before the end of this year.”

But the National Assembly may be forced to re-adjourn for at least a week to enable the MDAs that are yet to defend their budget before the committees to make their presentations. It was gathered that some of the committee chairmen are lobbying for the exercise to be given more time.

A lawmaker who spoke to BusinessDay on condition of anonymity said there was no way the committees would meet the October 30 deadline. He further expressed fear that with the situation, NASS may not be able to surmount some delays to pass the 2020 budget by December as it intended.

Meanwhile, Barau Jibrin, chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, told journalists at the weekend that MDAs that were yet to defend their budget would do it throughout this week.

“We are very much on course; the exercise of budget defence with MDAs can actually continue and they will hold throughout next [this] week,” he had said.

SOLOMON AYADO, Abuja