Hon. (Dr.) Abdulmumin Jibrin
BARING
any last minutes change, a detailed clean copy of the 2016 budget will
be ready today for onward transmission to the President for assent.
House of Representatives during plenary Recall that the Presidency, last
week, said the passed budget would not be assented to by President
Muhammadu Buhari because it did not contain the details. But reacting,
Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation,
Abdulmumuni Jibrin, said some previous administrations in the country,
especially former President Olusagun Obasanjo, during his time signed
the budget without the details which were made available two weeks
latter.
However, a member of the Appropriation
Committee, Joseph Edionwele, representing Esan Centra/Esan West/Igueben
Federal Constituency of Edo State, told Vanguard that there was no cause
for alarm as the joint committee would meet today to produce the clean
copy for onward transmission to the President. Edionwele said necessary
reconciliations had been concluded and that the final copy with the
details would be ready at today’s meeting. Also speaking to Vanguard on
why the details of the budget were not submitted to the Presidency,
member representing Akoko Edo Federal Constituency of Edo State in the
House of Representatives, Peter Akpatason, said the National Assembly
had to submit the passed 2016 budget to the Presidency without the
details to satisfy the curiosity of Nigerians. Akpatason, a former
National President of Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas
Workers, NUPENG, said there was nothing wrong in submitting the passed
budget to the Presidency without the details.
He said: “The ideal thing is to send in
the details when they are available, but in the circumstance that we
find ourselves, if the details are not immediately available, I think it
is proper that the President be given the information that he has
already. I don’t think there is anything unusual.”
“Again, what is going on just now is
also not completely new that the highlights have been forwarded to the
President and you take your time to cross the ‘t’s and dot the ‘i’s to
make sure that the kind of stories that happened at the beginning will
not happen in this case. “I think that is what is going on, Nigerians
are anxious, so it is understandable why people are getting so curious
about it. The budget proposal was not submitted early enough in the
first place and then because of the challenges that followed at the
beginning, the passage equally took much longer timecredit: omojuwa.com
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