discovered in the 2016 budget have begun at the National
Assembly, as the House of Representatives Committee on
Capital Market and other Institutions, yesterday, summoned
the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun and her counterpart
in the Ministry of Budget and Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma,
to appear before it to clarify issues in the 2016 budget
proposal.
The committees on appropriation of the two chambers of
the parliament had Tuesday this week disclosed the
indefinite suspension of consideration and passage of the
Appropriation Bill, following what the committees observed
as serious errors, making the fiscal policy document
impassable, without proper corrections and adjustments.
Chairman of the Committee on Capital Market, Hon.
Tajudeen Yusuf, disclosed the decision of the committee in
an interactive session with Investment and Securities
Tribunal, IST at the National Assembly complex.
Yusuf revealed that the 2016 budget proposal for IST was a
duplicate of the 2015 budget proposal and threatened that
the National Assembly would hold the Budget Office of the
Federation responsible for the various errors and lapses
observed in the 2016 budget proposal.
While lamenting over the development, Yusuf called for the
immediate overhauling of the budget to address the
lingering challenges, adding that failure to correct the lapses
might impact negatively on the socio-economic well-being
of the citizenry.
According to him, “We took the budget of the IST, which is
the investment court; unfortunately, we realized that what
was contained in the 2016 budget proposal was just the
exact copy of the 2015 budget appropriation.
“Items that have been completed in 2015 were repeated.
“Fortunately, the Senate too is aware of that and we are
thinking of having a tripartite meeting between the House,
Senate and Federal Ministry of Finance.
“This is to ask some basic questions why we have what we
have, so that as a House, we will do what is needful.”
While giving update on the oversight functions to the IST
office in Lagos, Yusuf disclosed that the committee
observed some infractions in the implementation of the
2015 appropriation.
He said ISL is a special court that deals with only issues on
capital market investment so as to build confidence.
Nigerian Pilot recalls that Chairman, Senate Committee on
Appropriation, Senator Danjuma Goje, and his House of
Representatives counterpart, Jibrin Abdulmumin, said
recently that the budget was fraught with too many errors,
which had made its passage into law impossible.
Goje noted that the Presidency had also admitted that there
were errors in the budget, explaining that it would be
inappropriate to give a new date now due to the errors that
they would have to work on.
“We are here in connection with the ongoing processing of
the 2016 budget because these two committees are the
ones saddled with the production of the final copies of the
budget that would be passed by the National Assembly for
onward submission to Mr. President for his assent and
subsequent implementation.
“We want to remove all ambiguities; we want to remove all
padding. We want to produce a budget that is in line with
the constitutional provision. During the budget defence,
there were a lot of issues based on the padding of the
budget, arising from over-bloated overheads and in some
instances cases of over-bloated personnel cost.
“But generally, there have been lot of issues. The
appropriation committees would look at these issues after
the whole budget defence and do a very thorough work
aimed at doing a proper clean-up of the budget. So in
summary, the time-table for passage of the budget is no
longer realistic because as appropriation committees of both
chambers of the National Assembly, we need additional
time to do a thorough job for the 2016 budget,
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