There are indications that Nigerian Senators may have joined their House of Representatives colleagues in the call for full implementation of the nation's budget. This is as Finance Minister failed to appear at the public hearing that was supposed to clarify why the Minister claimed that the budget has been implemented beyond 50%. According to visibly upset Deputy Senate President Ike Ikweremadu, who represented the Senate President yesterday, “I have the mandate of my colleagues to adjourn this public hearing to enable the minister of finance to show up. So, this public hearing is adjourned to 1.00pm on Thursday and the minister for finance is expected to be here no matter the circumstance. So, we have to do everything possible to get here on Thursday by 1pm,” said.
“We had expected the minister of finance to be here today (yesterday) because she is central to all that we are going to discuss. This matter was supposed to be discussed last week, but the minister was unavoidably absent. We learnt that she went to Asaba to declare open, a SURE- Programme. We consider our meeting with her on the issue that has to do with budget implementation to be more important than any other assignment.
“Today, (yesterday) we have also been told that she has gone to London to represent the president on an investment forum for which we know there are other ministers and government officials that could as well have done that to enable her to be here with us this afternoon. So it is regrettable that she is not here.”
“Over the years, we’ve had this issue of non-implementation of budget, and the reason or whatever reason they give surrounds the area of National Assembly inputs. So, we decided that we were going to make minimal input if there’s need to make any input at all. On this basis, we returned the budget the way it came and even when we identified the areas on which some adjustments needed to be made, we had to bend over at the risk of being accused of tampering with the budget to ensure that they received the it the way and manner they wanted it so that the implementation would be much more easier.”
“Unfortunately, the level of implementation has been anything less than commendable and that’s why we are worried. One of the excuses we’ve read from the pages of newspapers for non performance of the budget is what they considered as the tinkering of the budget by the National Assembly. So, what we had wanted to do today is to hear from the executive what that tinkering is.
“It is not enough for the executive or the Minister of Finance to accuse us of tampering with the budget. Now the stage is set, but the minister is not here and we are worried about it. So, it will be absolutely impossible for us to do this dialogue with the absence of the coordinating minister for the economy.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Senate Joint Committees on Appropriation, Finance and Public Accounts, Senator Mohammed Ahmad Maccido (PDP, Sokoto) described as far cry from the truth the claimed by the Finance Minister that the 2012 budget had been 56 percent implemented.
“This interactive session is for us to the constraints to the implementation of the 2012 Appropriation Act. We are at a loss because record available to us from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation shows 21.56 percent implementation, while that of the finance minister is 56 percent. We are not happy about this”
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