President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday signed the N9.12 trillion 2018 Appropriation Bill into law. However, in a remark which cast a dark pall on the appropriation, the President stated that it would be difficult to implement because the National Assembly tampered with the budget figures.
President Buhari accused the National Assembly of cutting N347 billion from 4,700 critical projects and injecting 403 unnecessary projects at the cost of N578 billion, submitting that the proposals introduced by the lawmakers were neither properly conceptualized, designed nor costed.
The President noted that the projects were strictly within the purview of states and local governments. President Buhari, who did not hide his reservation on how the budget was handled by the National Assembly, said he was compelled to sign the budget in the interest of Nigerians and in order not to shut down the recovery of the economy which has been affected by the delay in passing the budget.
However, the leadership of the National Assembly insisted that the power of appropriation belongs to it and that what its members did with the budget was to ensure that all the six geo-political zones of the country were evenly treated.
But the President indicated his intention to send to the National Assembly a supplementary budget to cover the projects cut off which, according to him, are very important to the government. He lamented that while the National Assembly cut some of the critical projects and inserted some personal projects, the lawmakers also went ahead to increase their budget with N14.5 billion from the initial N125 billion to N139.5 billion without any discussion with the Executive.
According to the President, some of the projects which budgetary allocations were cut include some strategic infrastructure projects such as counterpart funding for the Mambilla Power Plant, Second Niger Bridge/ancillary roads, the East-West Road, Bonny-Bodo Road, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and Itakpe-Ajaokuta Rail Project, cut by an aggregate of N11.5 billion. He was also not happy with the slashing of N7.5 billion from the budget of some ongoing critical infrastructure projects in the FCT, Abuja, especially major arterial roads and the mass transit rail project.
His words: “About 70 new road projects have been inserted into the budget of the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing. In doing so, the National Assembly applied some of the additional funds expected from the upward review of the oil price benchmark to the Ministry’s vote. ‘’Regrettably, however, in order to make provision for some of the new roads, the amounts allocated to some strategic major roads have been cut by the National Assembly. “Another area of concern is the increase by the National Assembly of the provisions for Statutory Transfers by an aggregate of N73.96 billion. Most of these increases are for recurrent expenditure at a time we are trying to keep down the cost of governance.”
But the representative of the Senate President and Deputy Majority Leader of the Senate, Bala Ibn Na’Allah said the adjustment made in the budget was in the interest of the people that elected them and to represent equal geopolitical spread.
He said: “The job of parliamentarian 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 (the President) has said he is coming with a supplementary budget which will be dealt with as quickly as possible. I assure you about that one.”
Also, the House of Representatives in a statement by its spokesperson, Abdulrazaq Namdas, said: “The House of Representatives is appreciative of President Muhammadu Buhari in signing the 2018 Appropriation Bill into law and wish to make the following observations:
“That the budget is usually a proposal by the Executive to the National Assembly, which the latter is given the constitutional power of appropriation to alter, make additions, costs or reduce as it may deem necessary.
“The Legislature is not expected to be a rubber-stamp by simply approving the Executive proposals and returning the budget to Mr. President. Therefore, the additions Mr. President complained of in his speech are justifiable.”
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