Doctors ask Buhari to slow down – Presidency Budget ready for Buhari's assent next week – Senate

The 2017 budget will be ready for presidential assent next week, Senate Leader Ahmad Lawan has said.

Lawan gave the assurance in an interview with State House reporters after his meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday.

President Muhammadu Buhari presented the budget document to the legislators on December 14 last year.

For over four months the budget process was bottled up at committee levels owing to the frosty relationship between the legislature and the executive.

The situation worsened after the recent police raid at the residence of the chairman of the Senate committee on appropriation, Danjuma Goje.

But the Senate leader told reporters there was nothing to worry about the reported carting away of the budget documents during the police raid. The police returned the items yesterday.

He said the trauma suffered by Goje following his house raid had hindered the Senate’s desire to pass the budget this

month. He said: ‘The National Assembly had intended to pass the budget in March, but because some of the parameters we had little or no control over, we couldn’t pass it in March. It was our desire and design to pass it within this month.

“But somehow, something happened; the chairman, senate committee on appropriations Senator Goje was raided by the police after a whistle blower gave information and part of those documents that were taken it was reported (that) part of the budget papers were also included.

“And other things happened, essentially that the trauma that the chairman had to go through affected the process of budgeting that we had been trying to do.

“The good news is that we are doing everything possible to ensure that we catch up the lost time and thinking that by next week, by the grace of God, we should be able to finish our own work and pass the budget to Mr President to sign.”

The government is currently running on last year’s budget but that grace will expire on Friday next week.

Unless the budget is passed within that time the government will be heading for a partial shutdown.

By then it will not be able to fund capital vote and will only spend 60 percent of recurrent vote.

N7.298 trillion budget is benchmarked at N305 naira against one US dollar ($1), daily crude oil production of 2.2 million barrels and oil price of $42 per barrel.

The 2016 budget faced controversies including the ‘budget padding’ issue, which delayed assent by President Muhammadu Buhari.

On February 24, 2016, President Buhari revealed that some “entrenched interests” illegally altered the 2016 national budget he presented to the National Assembly.

During budget defence month, outrageous figures were discovered to have found their way into the 2016 budget with some ministers telling committee members the document before them were not the approved estimates they presented.

President Buhari, who was at that time addressing the members of the Nigerian Community in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, vowed to “severely punish” all those that tinkered with budget document.

He said: “The culprits will not go unpunished. I have been a military governor, petroleum minister, military Head of State and headed the Petroleum Trust Fund. Never had I heard the words “budget padding.”

The president said it was disappointing and embarrassing that some people padded the budget.

President Buhari later sacked the then Director General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Bright Okogu and replaced him with Tijjani Abdullahi.