Senate To Pass 2016 Budget In March - Ndume

2016 Budget Presentation by President Buhari
Indications emerged yesterday that the National Assembly may have rescinded its decision to indefinitely suspend its passage of the 2016 budget.

While the leadership of the House of Representatives has expressed optimism that the 2016 may be passed into law as anticipated on Thursday, February 25, 2016, the leader of the Senate, Ali Ndume, said yesterday that the Senate was striving to pass the 2016 budget before the end of March.

Ndume also said, contrary to reports in the media, that at no time did the Senate indefinitely suspend its passage of the N6.08 trillion 2016 budget, explaining that the Red Chamber only said that the February 25 dateline earlier given “may not be feasible.”

Concerns have continued to persist over the accuracy of the fiscal document alleged to have been seriously ‘padded’ and replete with errors.

After the first reading of the budget at plenary, both the Senate and the House of Representatives had fixed February 25 for the passage of the budget, soon after defence sessions with the various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) at the committee level may have been concluded.

But the National Assembly last Tuesday announced that the February 25 deadline it gave for the passage of the budget estimates was no longer feasible due to inherent errors, ambiguities and phoney figures (padding) smuggled into the fiscal document.

Chairmen of Appropriation Committees of both chambers, Senator Danjuma Goje and Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, noted that they had postponed passage of the budget indefinitely due to gross errors already identified in the entire budget estimates at both chambers.

But in what apparently looks like an about turn, the House of Representatives said at the weekend that it was working closely with the executive arm of government to ensure the speedy passage of the budget as planned.

Spokesman of the House and chairman of the Standing Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Hon. Abdulrazak Namdas, who hinted this during his weekly press briefing at the weekend in Abuja, however, asked Nigerians to show understanding if the February 25 date is not achieved.

He said, “As regards 2016 Appropriation Bill, I want to state here that the 25th February dateline earlier suggested may or may not be achieved. We admit that there are issues that have come up in the budget, but the leadership of the House is working very hard in collaboration with the Executive to ensure that the dateline is achieved; but if it is not (achieved), Nigerians should show understanding.

“However, Standing Committees have been urged to stick to the timelines for interaction with the MDAs and submission of reports to the Appropriation Committee,” Namdas said.

In the same vein, Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, said that the Senate did not suspend its passage of the budget indefinitely, but only said that the February 25 deadline earlier given may not be feasible.

Speaking in Abuja yesterday, Ndume stated noted that since March is the deadline for the implementation of the 2015 budget, the Senate working hard to pass the 2016 Budget before the end of March.

The Senate leader explained that although 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, it may not possible due to some errors.

“We have not postponed it indefinitely; we are saying that with the developments that we are seeing as the time goes on, the 25th February deadline we gave ourselves 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 25th and say this is the budget; we are not saying that we have suspended it indefinitely. The reason we fixed 25th was because we wanted to have a gap of five weeks,” he said.

According to him, the gap would have enabled the Senate to fix whatever issues that needed to be handled before the March 31 deadline for the implementation of the 2015 budget.

Ndume further stated that the leadership of the National Assembly had met with ministers to iron out the grey areas and make corrections to them.

Promising that the Senate would ensure strict compliance with the implementation of the budget, the leader said once funds were available, he was convinced that the present administration would ensure a thorough implementation of the budget.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has refuted a report by an unknown media outfit alleging fraudulent activities by members of the National Assembly in the handling of constituency projects between 2013 to 2015.

Spokesman of the House, Abdulrazak Namdas, told journalists at the weekend that the report was “unfortunate,” and that the outfit does not actually understand what constituency project was all about.

He said, “It is obvious that the media support centre does not know how constituency projects are managed. Lawmakers are never given a penny to carry out constituency projects. Constituency projects are appropriated to the relevant MDAs. No cash is given to a lawmaker.

“Therefore, to say lawmakers diverted monies meant for constituency projects demonstrates not only lack of understanding of constituency projects, but also a desperate attempt by few individuals to set lawmakers against their constituents.”

Namdas assured that the 8th House of Representatives will do things differently, including ensuring that constituency projects get to the people, adding that the present 8th House of Reps has zero tolerance for corruption.



Civil servants responsible for budget padding – Gbajabiamila

Meanwhile, the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, has absolved President Muhamadu Buhari of any blame in the controversy surrounding the preparation of the 2016 budget estimates.

Rather, he said the bureaucrats, made up mostly of civil servants, should take the blame for the apparent inconsistencies, padding of figures and duplications in the fiscal document.

Gbajabiamila made this comment while interacting with a delegation of the National Association of Nigerians Students (NANS) from the South-West geopolitical zone, who had come to honour him in Abuja at the weekend.

When asked to clear the air on the controversies surrounding the proposed 2016 budget, the House Leader noted that those who had be given positions of trust and saddled with the responsibility of the budget job at various levels had betrayed the trust of the president; hence Buhari is not to be blamed but the civil servants.

He said, “First of all, I’m going to absolve the president, but I’m not going to absolve the people that did it. Why I must absolve the President I will tell you. The job was done by civil servants; it has always been done by civil servants. The president does not sit in a ministry; he doesn’t know what’s going on in a ministry or what they need or do not need.

“The argument can be that the buck stops at his desk – I agree with that; he must take responsibility. But the point is that he delegated (the task). Under the Constitution, he has the right to delegate his work to ministers, and he delegated the issue of budget and planning to the minister of budget and planning.

“And once you delegate, the assumption is that you’re doing the work of the President, and that’s what delegating power means. It’s in the Constitution and that’s what he’s done.

“Where I think the ball was dropped, I think it was with the minister of budget and planning; because after the civil servants, whether intentionally or not intentionally, did what they did, it was for the minister of budget and planning to vet and scrutinize those things before coming to the House, or the National Assembly. It’s not for the President to do,” Gbajabiamila said.

He assured the students that President Buhari was on top of the situation.

“Don’t forget that the President was the first to raise the alarm – that it looks like there is a budget mafia,” he said.

“I’m sure things we get better as we move along. The problem of Nigeria is multi-faceted. The President is dealing with one thing and he expects that the people he has appointed should able to deal with other things.”



2016 Budget Funding: Falana to sue FG over foreign loans

For failing to respond to a letter in which he advised President Muhammadu Buhari not to borrow $3.5 billion to finance the 2016 Budget and to recover the outstanding loans and accrued revenues payable to the Federation Account, human rights activist, Chief Femi Falana (SAN), has threatened to drag the federal government to court.

Falana, in a letter dated February 12, 2016 and addressed to the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, said he would commence legal proceedings not later than February 29, 2015 with a view to compelling the federal government to recover loans, royalties levies and other recoverable revenues payable to the Federation Account, which is not less than $66.5 billion.

The one paragraph letter reads: “Since you have not deemed it fit to react to the serious issues raised in the letter, kindly be informed that we shall commence legal proceedings not later than February 29, 2015, with a view to compelling the federal government to recover the said loans, royalties levies and other recoverable revenues of not less than $66.5 billion.”

LEADERSHIP recalls that the lawyer had, in a letter dated February 5, 2016, and also addressed to Mrs Adeosun, urged President Buhari to jettison the plan to take a $3.5 billion loan to finance the 2016 budget from the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) due to the unpalatable conditionalities attached to it.

He had urged the government to rather recover outstanding loans and accrued revenues payable to the Federation Account and use same to fund the budget.

The lawyer said that the hapless Nigerian people should not be made to pay for the gross mismanagement of the national economy by the federal government and the profligacy of the pampered members of the ruling class.

According to him, instead of taking a loan of $2.5 billion with dangerous conditionalities from the World Bank, the federal government should recover the aforesaid loans and revenues of not less than $66.5 billion with the assistance of the anti-graft agencies.

Falana gave the details of the said recoverable loans and revenue as:

“From five cycles of independent audit reports compiled by the National Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the potential recoverable revenues payable to the Federation Account are not less than $20,221,018,007.00, or approximately $20.2bn).

“The potential recoverable revenues are said to have arisen from “underpayment/underassessment of taxes, royalties, levies and rents. If you require more information in respect of this matter you may wish to contact your colleague, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning. In her capacity as the immediate past executive secretary of NEITI, she had called on the federal government to recover the said sum of $20.2 billion.

“On October 4, 2006, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) apportioned $7 billion to 14 Nigerian banks to “manage” out of the nation’s external reserves, which stood at $38.07 billion, as at the end of July, 2006. The amount involved represented 18.39 per cent of the total external reserves at the material time.

“In addition, following the crisis of global capitalism, which occurred in 2008, the CBN gave a bailout of $4 billion (N600 billion) to the commercial banks in the country. The CBN has not deemed it fit to ask for the refund of the total sum of $11 billion injected into the banking system in the space of two years.

“On September 6, 2015, the Presidency announced that the management of the NNPC had commenced the process of recovering of the sum of $9.6 billion in over-deducted tax benefits from joint venture partners on major capital projects and the legacy OPA/SWAP oil contracts.

“A fortnight ago, Mr Abubakar Malami, SAN, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, disclosed that the federal government had concluded arrangements to recover an additional $750 million of the Abacha loot.”

Falana also noted that the ongoing Senate probe into the affairs of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) had revealed that the corporation had accumulated over $25 billion (about N5 trillion) debts, a violation of its Act which put the debt ceiling at N800 billion.

He recalled that AMCON’s managing director, Mr Ahmed Kuru, had stated that most of the debtors of AMCON were ‘big men who fly in private jets, live in big mansions and they have taken money and they are not paying back.’

Falana continued: “Having regard to the fact that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose endorsement is required for the World Bank loan of $2.5 billion, will insist that certain unpalatable conditionalities be imposed on the people of Nigeria, we urge the federal government to jettison the plan to take the loan.

“While acknowledging the concerted efforts to recover the looted wealth of the nation through the anti-graft agencies and the Arms Procurement Panel, the Buhari administration should embark on the immediate recovery of the aforesaid loans and accrued revenues with a view to financing the 2016 budget and the infrastructural development of the nation.”

He reminded the federal government that when Nigeria paid $12.4 billion to exit the London/Paris Club in 2005, it had assured the Nigerian people that the $2.1 billion the country paid annually to service the Paris Club debt would be made available to fund critical priority sectors such as education, health, etc, and stimulate the economy.

According to him, not only have the critical sectors been neglected, but the federal government has further plunged the country into indebtedness, with Nigeria currently indebted to the tune of $64 billion; yet it is seeking another loan of $2.5 billion from the World Bank and $1 billion from the AfDB to fund the 2016 Budget.