The National Assembly on Wednesday, March 23, passed the controversial 2016 budget, leaving many Nigerians perplexed as to what has been deducted or added in the fiscal year appropriation.
The Chairman on Appropriation, Senator Danjuma Goje, had revealed that not less than N17 billion was subtracted from the budget. However, many believe the earlier reports which indicate that the Senate’s committee and sub-committee had uncovered huge budgetary paddling, running into almost a trillion naira.
On March 17, the senate discovered 25 fresh errors in the 2016 budget with 9 Ministers implicated in the scam.
Investigations revealed that the items involved were allocated about N37, 025, 238, 407 billion, of which about N21, 623,323,649 billion was voted for office repairs, while curious budget line items had N6, 411,661, 956 billion, duplication of projects had N3, 567,605,395 billion and non-priority project items with N5, 422, 647,407 billion.
Other errors highlighted, were Budget items with quantities not specified, Budget items with no location, large amount of money being appropriated for rehabilitation/repairs of office /residential buildings and purchase of office furniture and fittings, among several others.
Inconsistencies were located in the construction of solar boreholes at the cost of N140 million in the Ministry of Works, Power and Housing and in the National Power Training Institute.
Financial analysts have begun to decry how the National Assembly after much budgetary padding, could only subtract a meager sum of N17 billion from the budget.
They have argued that the National Assembly is shielding such items in secrecy as it has not come out to inform Nigerians on what happened to those figures.
Meanwhile, Post-Nigeria gathered that out of the N6, 060,677,358,227 trillion passed by the National Assembly, the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, gulped a total of N422, 964,928,495 billion almost 5 times higher than every other ministry.
The budget highlight as approved had an Aggregate Expenditure of N6,060,677,358,227 trillion; Statutory Transfers of N351,370,000.000 (retained); Debt Service N1,475,320,000,000 (retained); Recurrent Expenditure reduced from N2,648,600,000,000 to N2,646,389,236,196 trillion; Capital Expenditure also reduced from N1,845,540,000,000 to N1,587,598,122,031 trillion; Fiscal Deficit N2,204,936,925,711.16 and Deficit/GDP 2.14%.
Further breakdown of the budget showed that Presidential Amnesty Programme stipends and allowances of 30,000 Niger Delta ex-militants was allocated N7,875,000,000 billion.
Other allocations are: Ministry of Agriculture N46,175,963,859; Ministry of Defence N130,864,439,542; Ministry of Education N35,433,487,466; Ministry of Health N28,650,342,987, Ministry of Information and Culture N6,071,503,956; Ministry of Interior N61,713,279496; Ministry of Justice N879,736,744; Ministry of Solid Mineral Development N7,332,623,257; Ministry of Niger Delta N19,440,328,551; Ministry of Transportation N188,674,679,674; Ministry of Works, Power and Housing N422,964,928,495.
The Statutory transfer allocations include: National Judicial Council N70 billion; Niger Delta Development Commission N41,050 billion, Universal Basic Education N77,110 billion; National Assembly N115 billion; Public Complaints Commission N2 billion, Independent National Electoral Commission N45 billion and National Human Rights Commission N1.2 billion.
Post-Nigeria
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