Speaking while fielding questions from State House correspondents on Wednesday, Deputy Senate Majority Leader, Bala Na' allah, said that the National Assembly is not worried over the concerns raised by President Muhammmadu Buhari over changes it made in the 2018 budget.
TORI News
had reported earlier that President Muhammadu Buhari said members of the national assembly added 6,403 projects of their own to the 2018 budget proposal sent to them, and also made cuts amounting to N347 billion in the allocations to 4,700 projects he submitted for consideration.
While speaking after the president assented to the Appropriation Bill, Na'Allah said if they had allowed the budget to go the way the president presented it to then they would have incurred the wrath of those who elected them.
Asked if the National Assembly was worried about the concerns raised by the president, Na'Allah responded: "No, we are not worried. The job of parliamentarians is a very difficult one. The way the budget came, if we had allowed it to go that way, we would have been in trouble with those who elected us.
"You have to balance between the six-geo political zones. It is the balancing efforts by the National Assembly that led to those observations and happily enough."
According to
DailyTrust, the deputy senate leader assured that the National Assembly would as quickly as possible deal with a supplementary budget which Buhari promised to send, adding that since the president had not sent the supplementary budget, he could not give a timeline on what it would be treated.
He said; "Normally, supplementary budgets doesn’t last long, it will be built on what has already been done by the National Assembly. I think that is the most important issue."
Na'Allah admitted that Buhari was right in complaining about the delay in passing the budget, noting however that "if you remember, you were here, the president had to order some MDAs to appear before the Assembly for the purpose of defending their budgets. It’s a very delicate issue.
"If somebody said he wants N500 million for the maintenance of bridges nationwide, then you expect the National Assembly to say Ok, that budget is approved because it came from the executive, then we have not done our work, we will be interested in knowing which of the roads are you going to maintain so that again, we don’t give another allocation in the next budget. Those observations are correct, but in the budgeting process, those things are normal."
Meanwhile, the chief whip of the House of Representatives, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, affirmed that some of the major concerns raised by Buhari were very critical.
"And I am afraid if I should be in a position to respond on behalf of the House, but for me as an individual and a member of the House of Representatives, I want to believe that the president is at liberty to raise some of these observations," he said.
Doguwa said the most important thing was that the budget had been signed and had become a law of the federation, adding that the House of Representatives expected "the executive to now implement the law to the letter."
He said should Buhari bring a supplementary budget, the House would "also at the same time be at liberty to look at the president’s concerns and those things he wants us to now review", noting that "the National Assembly is always in a position to work hand in hand with Mr President. A lot of us, in both chambers of the National Assembly, have tremendous respect for Mr President and we cherish his moral integrity as a leader.
"I want to believe we will always play in tune to his expectations to make him deliver on the dividends of democracy that he promised especially in this period of election.
"Some of us that are in the APC, and even a lot of members that are in opposition are quite aware of the enormous responsibility on the shoulders of Mr President. Now is the right time to cooperate with Mr President and give him what he desires as the leader of the government."
On the delay in passing the budget, he said the legislature could not be expected to rubber-stamp it
"We have to do the nitty gritty of budget consideration. Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well, and we have done what we think is the right thing to do to deliver on the expectations and the mandate bestowed on us by the people of our constituencies," he said.