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| President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria |
President Muhammadu Buhari and his ministers are studying the details of the 2016 budget transmitted to the Presidency by the National Assembly on Wednesday.
Recall that President Buhari had said he would not sign the budget unless it was accompanied by the details.
The President’s receipt of the budget, yesterday, came on a day former President Olusegun Obasanjo paid him a courtesy visit, with a declaration that he never signed budgets into law, without details during his tenure.
This came as indications emerged that the President will be travelling to China on Sunday to shop for $2 billion loan to address the N3 trillion deficit in the new budget.
Competent sources said the aim of studying the document presented by the NASS by the executive was to compare what was eventually approved with what was sent in by the President.
It was learned that the executive was expected to spend one or two days to go through the document to enable the President assent to the bill before travelling to China next week.
The ministers were expected to examine the budget of their respective MDAs to see whether there was a substantial addition or subtraction which could adversely affect implementation. Source said
The top official said that although the Presidency was not expecting the NASS to return the fiscal document as he presented it to them, it was, however, mindful of the need to prevent undue ‘padding’ of the budget with unnecessary items, which had little or no real benefits to majority of Nigerians.
The source said President Buhari was eager to sign the bill into law to ensure immediate implementation and to give a new lease of life to the people and arrest the hardship in the land.
“There is a groundswell of opinion that Mr. President should sign the bill into law if there was no substantial deviation that could affect the performance of the budget,” the official said.
Asked whether he knew when the president would assent to the bill, the official said that he was certain that he would do so before travelling to China next week.
President Buhari had, last week, served notice that he would study the budget to be transmitted to him by NASS, ministry by ministry, before assenting to it, a development that drew flaks from prominent members of the legislature.
Most of them claimed that Buhari has no power to tamper with what they have passed.
Buhari was said to be afraid that any undue padding of the budget could make it difficult for his administration to implement it.
Competent sources said one controversial area that the Presidency would look out for was money meant for ‘constituency projects’, which could have been substantially raised as has always been the practice and a source of friction between the legislature and the executive.
Under the tradition, the NASS allocates some projects and attaches some money to them, with the principal officers getting higher allocations than ordinary members of the NASS.
But President Buhari is said to be opposed to such practice and wants the funds meant for capital projects to go straight to the respective MDAs for implementation.
It was learned that key government functionaries familiar with the process, had drawn the attention of the President to the trick usually applied to import some projects into the budget after presentation by the executive.
