…Resolve to meet Finance Minister over what it called irreconcilable figures
The House of Representatives on Wednesday uncovered what it described as irreconcilable figures in the budget estimates of the Federal Government in ministries, departments and agencies of the government.
This happened at the commencement of the debate on the general principles of the N8.83 trillion 2019 budget moved by the House Leader Hon. Femi Gbajabiaila during its plenary on the floor of the House.
The budget was entitled: “A bill for An Act to authorize the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation, the total sum of N8,826,636,578,915 (Eight Hundred and Twenty-Six Billion, Six Hundred and Twenty Six Billion, Six Hundred and Thirty-Six Million, Five Hundred and Twenty-Seven Million, Five Hundred and Seventy-Eight Thousand, Nine Hundred and Fifteen Naira only of which N492,360,342,965 is for Statutory Transfers, N2,264,014,113,092 is for Debt Service, N4,,038,557, 664,767 is for Reccurent Expenditure while the su of N,031,704,458,092 is for contribution to Development for Capital Expenditure for the year ending o 31 December 2019”.
No sooner that the House Leader concluded his debate on the need for the budget to be passed that a member of the House Hon. China Adamu (APC, Niger) discover discrepancies in the budget estimates of ministries, departments and agencies MDAs of the document.
He noted that in the MDAs budget, the figures for various subheads did not tarry with the total amount earmarked as the total budget of these agencies.
Consequently, the Speaker Hon. Yakubu Dogara immediately perused through the document and stated that there are irreconcilable differences in the budget estimates really.
The Speaker therefore mandated the relevant House Committees to interface with the Minister of Finance Mrs Zainab Ahmed to fine tune the budget figures before further actions on it.
Meanwhile the House had commenced debate on the general principles of the budget preparatory to its early passage by the lawmakers.
Some lawmakers who spoke during the debate on the budget such as Hon. Aliyu Pategi (Kwara,PDP), Hon Sunday Karimi (Kogi, PDP), Hon.Simon Arabo (Kaduna, PDP) and Hon. Toby Okechukwu (Enugu, PDP) lamented the little impact of the 2018 budget of the government on the citizen due largely to poor implementation.
While Okechukwu noted that the past four years budgets had been budget deficits, Pategi noted that the nation wasted huge scare resources on these budgets.
The House thereafter deferred further debate on the budget to Thursday January 24, 2019 for the relevant House committees to interface with the Minister of Finance on the budget estimate discrepancies.