Budget Office stalls passage of revised 2020 budget in Senate

The consideration of the N10.509trillion revised 2020 budget forwarded to the Senate by President Muhamnadu Buhari was on Tuesday stalled over failure to capture N186billion by the budget office. 
Explaining the development to the lawmakers, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Jibrin Barau ( APC Kano North), said that the budget office refused to capture the entire N500billion intervention fund for COVID-19 in the appropriation bill.
He further explained that while N314billion is captured as part of the intervention fund, the balance of N186billion proposed for health sector was not captured.

Sen. Jibrin Barau


The lawmaker explained this when the  President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan called him to lay the report of the already considered revised 2020 budget from its committee on Appropriation for possible passage. 
Recall that the Senate had in giving the request expeditious consideration, carried out debate on general principles of the fresh proposal along with those of the also revised 2020-2022 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper ( FSP) the very week they received them which led to passage of MTEF/FSP last week Tuesday.
Barau said that when his committee noted the failure to capture the N186billion, they 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 .
“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.
The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, who presided over the plenary, has, however, expressed his concern of this development, saying, “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.”

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