Ommitted N186b stalls Senate consideration of N10.509 trillion 2020 revised budget
Tunde Opalana, Abuja
Expeditious consideration of the N10.509 trillion Federal Government 2020 revised budget by the Senate on Tuesday was stalled by the ommission of a sum of N186 billion out of the N500 billion appropriated for the Covid -19 intervention fund.
Due to the ommission by the Budget Office, the Senate Tuesday was forced to stepped down consideration of the revised budget forwarded to it for consideration by President Muhamnadu Buhari penultimate week .along with those of the revised 2020-2022 Medium Term Expenditure Framework ( MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper ( FSP).
When called upon to lay the report on the revised budget at plenary, the Chairman of the Appropriation Committee , Jibrin Barau ( APC Kano North), stunned the Senate by revealing that the Budget Office failed to capture the entire N500 billion intervention fund for COVID-19 in the appropriation bill .
According to him, while N314billion is captured as part of the intervention fund , the balance of N186billion proposed for health sector , was not captured.
” Upon making such observation at committee level, we quickly inform the budget office of the omission last week .
“Though the budget office as part of excuses given for the omission said since the entire N500billion was captured in the MTEF/ FSP documents already passed by the Senate , that there was no need for it to be fully captured in the budget .
” But we rejected that excuse in line with sections 80 and 81 of the 1999 Constitution which empowers the National Assembly to appropriate every single Kobo for the executive before spending .
” On the strength of our superior argument, the budget office admitted wrongness of the omission but promised to write a letter to us to be used as evidence of helping them to include it .
” But the expected letter never came till now , making us not to be ready for presentation of any report now .
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” If by the end of today , the office still refuse to send the letter to us, we shall be left with no other alternative than to print out our report today based on proposals contained in the Appropriation bill for consideration in plenary tomorrow”, he said .
Irritated by the development , the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan said : ” the Senate hereby advise those responsible for the budget documents and expected letter to do the needful without further delay . They need to be meticulous and responsible .
“The National Assembly cannot be a destination where lack of efficiency on somebody’s job would be entertained .
” If we put figures without documents , they will accuse us of padding . We must have the documents printed today unfailingly , lay it tomorrow and give it final consideration on Thursday”, he said .
