2016 MISSING BUDGET: BUHARI SEEKS CUT IN VILLA VOTES

President Muhammadu Buhari wrote the Senate over the 2016 budget because of some obvious omissions and errors discovered in the version he presented to the joint session of both chambers of

the National Assembly, on December 22, 2015.

A senator, who craved anonymity, because the Senate leadership had asked members to stop making public comments on the issue, stated this in an interview with one of our correspondents on Monday.

The lawmaker from North-West, who said he had been briefed about the details of Buhari’s letter billed to be read in plenary today (Tuesday), said the action was necessary to avoid a national embarrassment.

The senator said that the version of the budget proposal submitted by Buhari did not contain all allocations for the Villa budget, including the cost of maintaining the complex.

Apart from this, the lawmaker said that the Presidency saw the need to drastically reduce the cost of purchasing new BMW cars, hence it decided to review the figure quoted in the earlier version of the document before the red chamber.

The senator said, “The adjustment being sought by the executive is not too serious but it could lead to a national outcry if nothing urgent was done to quickly rectify it. The President in his current letter to the Senate is asking us to make use of the soft copy of the 2016 budget he sent to us last week.

“He, (Buhari) is drawing the Senate attention to the fact that not all budgets for the Presidential Villa were included in the earlier document he presented. He is also informing us that there was the need to reduce the cost of the BMW cars the Presidency was proposing to buy.

“President Buhari believes that it was not proper for the Presidency to spend such a huge amount of money without the National Assembly’s appropriation. He also considered the cost of the proposed BMW cars too high, hence he decided to write us to make necessary amendments.”

The senator said apart from the omission of the entire Villa budget in the document he presented, the President was also not comfortable with the figure of items needed to maintain the Villa as outrageous and needed to be drastically reduced.

Attempts to get reactions of senators to the issue on Monday failed as some of them claimed that the Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, had warned them through a text message to keep sealed lips on the budget controversy for now.

One of the senators from the South-West, said, “All what I can tell you is to wait till tomorrow (today) when the Senate President (Dr. Bukola Saraki) will read the letter. I have on my phone a text message from the Senate leader that we should not make public comments on the issue for now.”

However, Ndume at a news conference in his office on Monday said that a thorough scrutiny of the 2016 budget before the Senate indicated that the document did not pass the necessary integrity test of the red chamber.

He explained that the it was a practice in the National Assembly that the opposition lawmakers usually screen the details of the fiscal document whenever it was presented to see areas of contradictions, and duplication of figures.

He said the report of the opposition senators in the Eight Senate was that there were a lot of errors, omissions and duplication in the budget before the chamber, hence the leadership decided to draw the attention of the executive to it.

But a non-governmental organisation, Friends in the Gap Advocacy Initiative, on Monday, said it was time for the All Progressives Congress, “a party that rode to power on the high moral ground of anti-corruption and transparency to come out publicly to apologise to Nigerians over the action of one of their own.”

The group, in a statement by its Executive Director, George Oji, noted that the allegations of forgery levelled against the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang, by the senate, was nothing but corruption.

Oji said, “If the action of Enang does not constitute corruption, then, the APC needs to come up with a new template for defining corruption. No doubt, Enang must have been asked to undertake the criminal act of smuggling the budget out of the National Assembly by someone.”

Meanwhile, the Senate will on Tuesday (today), question the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele, over the alarming slide of the nation’s currency against the US dollar.

Emefiele was asked to report at 11am on Tuesday to give explanations on the continuous sliding of the naira which now stands at N325 to a dollar.

The senate leader, who moved the motion to summon the CBN boss under matter of urgent national importance, had explained that it was expedient for the red chamber to invite him to brief it over the matter.

Ruling on Ndume’s submission, Saraki, directed the senate leader to convey the Senate’s resolution to the CBN governor.

While the Chairman, Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, Senator Rafiu Ibrahim, told our correspondent that the CBN governor would be questioned at open plenary, the senate leader, said Emefiele would take questions at an executive session.

Meanwhile, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Yakubu Dogara, will read a letter from President Muhammadu Buhari to lawmakers today conveying his decision to withdraw the 2016 budget.

Credit: PUNCH