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| Mohammed Ali Ndume |
The Senate will pass this year’s budget before the end of next month, Ali Ndume said yesterday.
The Senate leader said the 2015 budget would end next month and it was the desire of the Senate to pass the 2016 budget before that time.
Ndume said contrary to reports in the media, the Senate did not suspend its passage indefinitely, but only said February 25 “may not be feasible”.
The Senate leader noted that it was the wish of the National Assembly to pass the budget five weeks before the expiry of the period set for the implementation of the 2015 budget.
But he explained that it would not be possible due to some errors.
His words: “We have not postponed it indefinitely; we are saying that with the developments we are seeing, the February 25 deadline may not be realistic.
“That is why we now said that going by this, it is not possible to say we will come back on February 25 and say this is the budget; we are not saying that we have suspended it indefinitely.
“The reason we fixed February 25 was because we wanted to have a gap of five weeks,” he said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
The Senate leader said the gap would have enabled the Senate fix whatever issues that needed to be handled before the March 31 deadline for the implementation of the 2015 budget.
The leadership of the National Assembly, Ndume said, met with ministers to iron out the grey areas and make corrections to the contentious areas.
He assured Nigerians that the Senate would ensure strict compliance with the implementation of the budget.
