2016 Budget: We’re working with executive —Ndume

By Emman Ovuakporie, Johnbosco Agbakwuru & Levinus Nwabughiogu ABUJA — To ensure the harmonization and speedy passage of the 2016 budget estimate, the Senate Leader, Mr. Ali Ndume, yesterday, said the Senate was working in tandem with the executive arm of government. Sen. Ndume Ndume, who spoke to State House correspondents after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said the budget was riddled with errors and needed the collective input of the appropriate stakeholders to make it work. He said: “I hope you people know that I am the Senate Leader and this is All Progressives Congress, APC, government. So if the Senate Leader comes to see the Vice President or the President in the villa, is it supposed to be a surprise? I guess it is because, most often, I come in the night but this time, I came in the afternoon and it became very strange.” Reps dump Communications ministry budget Meanwhile, the House of Representatives Joint Committees on Information and Communications   Technology, ICT,  yesterday, asked Minister of Communications, Mr Adebayo Shittu, to produce a copy of President Buhari’s copy of the budget within four days. The Muhammed Onawon (PDP, Nasarawa) led Joint Committees on Information and Communication Technology, ICT, turned down the budgetary proposal presented by the Minister of Communications,  Mr Shittu, on the ground that it was still different from the copy presented by President Buhari earlier in the year.

 Immediately the minister presented his budgetary proposal, the Chairman of the House Committee on Telecommunications, Saheed Fijabi, picked holes in the presentation, saying: “We have two budgets here.  We can’t be discussing something different. They are not defending what we have.” Linus Okorie (PDP, Ebonyi), who spoke in the same vein, said it would be  tantamount to committing an act of illegality to deliberate a budgetary proposal alien to the lower legislative chamber, adding: “We cannot alter the basis of the law.  Here we have a capital provision for N5 billion.

  What we have here now are new and extraneous projects.” Shittu  pleaded for the understanding of the lawmakers, saying the same copy of his ministry‘s budget would be presented to them after the entire federal ministries’ budgets would have been finally harmonised by the Finance Ministe.