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Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, signed the 2019 appropriation bill of N8.92 trillion into law but complained that adjustment of the budget by the National Assembly may affect its smooth implementation.
He said the injection of about N90 billion to the N8.83 trillion he submitted to the legislature would make it difficult for the government to realise its set objectives.
He, however, stated that the executive would dialogue with the forthcoming ninth National Assembly so as to make life much better for Nigerians.
“Of course, some of these changes will adversely impact our programmes making it difficult for us to achieve the objectives of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan.
“Although I will be signing this bill, it is my intention to engage the National Assembly to ensure we deliver on our promises.
“I will, therefore, be engaging with the leadership of the 9th National Assembly as soon as they emerge to address some of our concerns with the budget,’’ he said.
He said the legislature made cuts amounting to N347 billion in the allocations to 4,700 projects submitted to them for consideration and introduced 6,403 projects of their own amounting to N578 billion.
The president said he only signed the bill because he did not want to further slow down the pace of recovery of Nigeria’s economy. He said he would send “a supplementary and/or amendment budget” to the National Assembly to rectify the critical issues he raised.
He promised that his administration will look at how to improve the budget process in order to speed up its consideration as well as return the country to the January to December fiscal year timetable.
He appreciated the Ministers of Budget and National Planning, Finance, the budget office of the federation and all other stakeholders that played key roles in producing the document.
President Buhari also lauded the leadership and members of the National Assembly for the efforts they put in passing the 2019 appropriation bill.
Earlier in his remarks, Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, thanked the leadership of the National Assembly for their cooperation and support.
He also thanked the Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo, Ministers and all members of the Economic Management Team for the various roles they played in producing the budget.
He said: “Because it is a collective endeavour, without their support, it would have been impossible to produce a budget.’’
Reacting to the issue of padding raised by Buhari, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, maintained that the National Assembly is not a rubber stamp and that as representatives of the people, it was their duty to decide which project is of priority to the people.
“The issues raised concerns certain reductions that were made in the budget and some subheads increases that were made and that such reductions would make it a bit difficult for some of those projects to be implemented.
“But he said it is an ongoing process and he will have discussion with the leadership of the National Assembly to see what they will be able to do to in order to put that behind them and then execute whatever critical projects that suffered some form of hurt in the process of passing the project in the National Assembly.
“Above all, what I heard him say is the issue of aligning the appropriation from January to December just like the case in the private sector.
“I think that can really be achieved but it must start with the early and timely submission of the budget to the National Assembly from the executive.
“A situation where the budget is submitted in December, even if you shut down the entire National Assembly, we will not be able to achieve the January deadline.
“So going forward, this is a collective exercise between the executive and the legislature. The budget is a law and being a law, it falls within the purview by constitution and design of the National Assembly to make the law. In most cases, it is the National Assembly that decides how federally generated receipts should be expended and the National Assembly took that decision and we are glad that the president has signed it into law,” Dogara told State House Correspondents after the signing ceremony.
Asked how the annual complain of the National Assembly reducing and increasing the budget could be resolved, Dogara replied: “Well, I have told you that the job of the National Assembly is not to agree with the executive. I don’t think any congress in the world does that. By the constitution and design, the executive informs us what they intend to do and the representatives of the people in National Assembly decides what is priority since they represent the people. It is going to be a noughty area but we will continue to define the relationship between the executive and the legislature.
“Whether it is Britain or US, wherever it is, there is always a strain in this issue of budget because it deals with high stakes distributional issues as to who get what, which part of Nigeria gets this and that. So it will continually be an issue. We should not be defined by those issues rather we should define those issues by forming consensus that is the part to progress and we will continue to do that.”
Meanwhile, Senate President Bukola Saraki, narrowly missed the signing ceremony because of an official engagement in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Saraki who got to the conference room at the end of the ceremony was said to have come straight from the airport having spent the night in Port Harcourt where he attended a Rivers State function on Monday.
