National Assembly has defended decision to inject fresh projects and thinker with the 2018 budget, that led to the inclusion of 6403 projects worth N578 billion, saying that it acted in national interest
President Muhammadu Buhari had lamented that most of the additions to the project were done without consultations with the Executive arm of government, even as he expressed worries that the Ministries, Departments and Agencies ( MDAs) of the federal government lacked capacity to implement some of the projects included in the 2018 budget by the National Assembly
But the deputy Senate Majority leader, Ibin Na Allah, stated this while fielding questions from State House Correspondents, after leading Senators to the signing of the budget by President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said they were motivated by national interest in adding the new projects
Na Allah had represented Senate President Bukola Saraki, while Ado Doguwa, Chief Whip of the House of Representatives stood in for the Speaker, Dogara Yakubu
Asked to react to some of the concerns on the budget raised by the president, Na Allah declared that the National Assembly took into cognizance, the needs of all the six geo- political zones
“ We are not worried, the job of parliamentarians is a very difficult one. The way the budget came, if we had allowed it to go that way, we would have been in trouble with those who elected us. you have to balance between the six geo political zones.
“ It is the balancing efforts by the National Assembly that led to those observations and happily enough, he himself has said he is coming with a supplementary budget which will be dealt with as quickly as possible, I assure you about that one.”
The law maker assured that the supplementary budget when sent to the National Assembly will be treated with dispatch
“supplementary budgets doesn’t last long, it will be built on what has already been done by the National Assembly. I think that is the most important issue”
He blamed the MDAs for the prolonged delay in passing the budget adding that “ it took the President to order some MDAs to appear before the Assembly for the purpose of defending their budgets.”
“ It is a very delicate issue, if somebody said he wants N500 million for the maintenance of bridges nationwide, then you expect the National Assembly to say Ok, that budget is approved because it came from the executive, then we have not done our work, we will be interested in knowing which of the roads are you going to maintain so that again, we don’t give another allocation in the next budget Those observations are correct but in the budgeting process those things are normal.”
“Certainly you wouldn’t expect us to just rubber stamp and just bring it back. We have to do the nitty gritty of budget consideration.
“Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well and we have done what we think is the right thing to do to deliver on the expectations and the ,mandate bestowed on us by the people of our constituencies.” he said
