The leadership of the House of
Representatives said it has put checks in place to ensure that the 2018 budget
is not padded.
Chairman House Committee on
Media, Abdulrazak Namdas, stated this on Wednesday during an interview with The
Nation newspaper.
According to him, the measure put
in place by the Green Chamber is to ensure that the type of controversies
witnessed in the past does not recur.
He said: “You should know that
the leadership of the House has put checks in place, like the rule that, no
Standing Committee chairman can submit his report to the Appropriation
Committee without the signatures of two-thirds of the members of the committee.
“We have passed the stage of the
budget controversy, allegations of padding and stories of the budget getting
missing. Some of these were symptoms of the 2016 budget season, we didn’t have
such problems with the 2017 budget. ”
Namdas also hinted that the
budget may not get to the President at the time he envisaged, adding that the
National Assembly must consider the fine points of the bill and make the
necessary adjustment that reflects the realities of the constituencies and the
nation in general.
He said: “When the president
presented his speech on the budget presentation day, he expressed the wish that
the budget is approved by January 1st.
“We are saying that we will work
faster since the 2018 Appropriation Bill was brought a little bit earlier, we
should also be able to approve the budget a little earlier.
“But I cannot be specific about a
date since we are few weeks to the end of December. This is about twenty
sitting days, so if I sit here in the comfort of my office to assure Nigerians
that the budget will be passed by 1st of January, you and even them will know
it’s not feasible.
“For the budget process, you
should be looking at a minimum of three months. We will deliberate on the basic
principles of the budget, it will be committed to committees to work on it,
meet with MDA and they now send their report to the Appropriation Committee.
All of these processes take time.
“I think people should be more
concerned about the National Assembly and the executive coming up with an
implementable budget, rather than focusing on a January date.”
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everydayAdvertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com