Osinbajo: Don't blame Presidency for budget delay

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has exonerated the executive from the delay in passage of the 2018 Appropriation Bill.

Osinbajo, in an interview with journalists in Lagos on Friday, said the executive had fulfilled its part by presenting the budget proposals to the National Assembly in the first week of last November.

The vice president said since the appropriation bill was still in the National Assembly, there was very little the executive could do to control that.

He said the executive was waiting for the legislature to pass the budget.

Last week Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Sunny Ogbuoji (PDP, Ebonyi) blamed ministers and heads of Federal Government agencies for delay in passage of the budget.

He told the Senate that “Most of the subcommittees have huge challenges with the MDAs because majority of them are not coming forward to interface with them. Some ministers will tell you they are travelling out of the country and because of them; the MDAs are not fully ready.”

But Osinbajo said "We agreed that we will submit our proposal in good time, and we did that first week of November. The President did so. We fulfilled that part of the agreement. The budget is with the National Assembly. There is very little we can do to control that. That's the system that we have."

On the rifts between the executive and the legislature, Osinbajo said: "Well, I’m not so sure that the tensions are unknown. The democratic system anywhere as, for example, in the US where we borrow our bicameral legislature from, you find that despite the fact that the Republican Party controls major part of parliament, it still doesn't mean that bills are necessary going to go through.

"So, one must assume that the responsibility of the National Assembly is to scrutinize what the executive is doing and not just to be a rubber stamp. But I also agree with you entirely that it’s important for us, for the sake of our country, our economy and for the sake of many young people, who are relying on us to deliver. We ensured that we released our budget on time. I want to believe that the executive has done its part and we wait on the National Assembly.”