The revised 2020 budget forwarded to the Senate by President Muhammadu Buhari a fortnight ago suffered a setback on the floor of the upper legislative chamber, on Tuesday..
Chairman, Senate Appropriations Committee, Barau Jibrin, said the senate had issues with the executive for failing to include about N186 billion meant for COVID-19 emergency response in the budget.
He said though the amount was included in the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), the Budget Office excluded it from the Appropriations Bill. He said the omission had forced the budget which ought to have been considered and passed into law to be deferred.
“The N500 billion earmarked for COVID-19 emergency was fully captured in the MTEF. But in the budget, about N186 billion was omitted and that’s supposed to be for the health sector. We drew the attention of the Budget Office to it and we even invited the Director General.
“We put a call across to the minister of finance and she promised to send a letter, requesting that we include the amount. As I speak, they’re yet to send that letter. We may be tempted to go ahead and if they want us to do that, it will come as a supplementary budget,” he said.
However, President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, disagreed with Jibrin saying the adjusted 2020 Appropriation Bill (budget) must be passed into law by tomorrow. He stated this despite appeals from some lawmakers to stay action pending the inclusion of some of the missing components.
“You did the right thing by insisting that they send a letter to include the money in the budget. If we go ahead and put the figure, they will accuse us of budget padding. Nigerians will begin to castigate us and no one will understand why we did that. So, go ahead and print copies of the budget today. We will distribute it to senators tomorrow (today) and the budget will be passed on Thursday (tomorrow) without any further delay. Some people are supposed to do their work, but they’re not doing that. We can’t wait because of that,” Lawan said. – The Sun.
