The Senate, Monday explained why it rejected
the second version of the 2016 budget
brought to it.
It said the budget failed to meet integrity
checks.
The senate also described the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) call for the
impeachment of President Muhammadu
Buhari over the budget controversy as the
biggest joke of the year.
Senate Leader, Senator Mohammed Ali
Ndume who briefed newsmen in Abuja over
the controversy surrounding the budget,
insisted that there was no need to dissipate
energy on the 2016 budget since the Senate
was in control of the situation.
He said that nobody ever declared the budget
missing, especially when President Buhari did
not read the budget off hand.
Explaining why the second version of the
budget was rejected, Ndume said that the
integrity checks showed that some projects
that were not accommodated in the original
budget presented by President Buhari were
curiously injected into the budget.
He said, “There were issues with the budget
that some people were not comfortable with.
There were integrity checks and it was
discovered that there were some loopholes.
“We asked the Ethics and Privileges
Committee to find out what actually happened
and it was discovered that there were two
versions of the budget.
“It is not that the figure submitted by Mr.
President has changed. It is still the same
thing. It is not that what Mr. President
submitted is sacrosanct, that it cannot be
changed. It can be changed.
“It is not that the N6.08 trillion budget Mr.
President submitted to us has changed or any
of the subheads have changed. They are still
the same.
“The President did not submit a failed
document. The President submitted a budget,
which went through integrity checks.
“I have my soft and hard copies of the budget.
I spent most of the weekend looking at the
budget.
“What I tried to do was to make a
comparative analysis. So, I could not find the
difference. But then they told that the
difference is not in the sub-total or sectoral
allocation. They did integrity checks and they
gave me an example.
“That if a certain amount was allocated to do
two things and they felt that that amount can
be used to do four things. They said instead
of two things, do four. They are still talking
about spending the same amount but getting
more for it.
“But what I can tell you now is that the budget
that was submitted originally, there were
certain integrity checks on it that made some
changes in the quantity but not in the total.”
On what informed the integrity checks, he said
that the integrity checks became necessary in
order to match figures with projects.
On the call to impeach President Buhari over
the budget controversy, he said that the talk
of impeachment by the PDP is the biggest
joke of the year.
He asked, “What are we to do with PDP for
what they did to this country in the past 16
years. We are to kill PDP.
“Buhari is the kind of leader we want in
Nigeria. The good thing is that now we have a
president, before we had something else.”
Daily post.
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