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| Senate President Bukola Saraki |
The Senate has said it will not consider any bill
until the 2017-2019 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal
Strategy Paper it is currently working on is passed, even though
President Muhammadu Buhari will present the 2017 Appropriation Bill to
the National Assembly next Wednesday.
The President had notified the National
Assembly of his intention to present the Appropriation Bill to the
legislature on December 14, 2016.
Buhari’s letter to the Assembly was read
by the President of the Senate, Senator Bukola Saraki, during plenary
at the Senate on Tuesday.
The President, in the letter titled:
‘2017 budget proposals and plans to lead Nigeria out of recession’, said
he would also address a joint session of both chambers of the National
Assembly on the efforts by his administration to bring the country out
of recession.
The Deputy Majority Leader of the
Senate, Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah, while making clarifications on the
possibility of presenting the budget proposals to the legislature when
the MTEF/FSP had not been passed, stated that the lawmakers would not
work on the bill until the framework had been approved.
He said, “What people don’t understand
is that the approval of the MTEF is not a precondition for accepting the
budget, but it is a precondition for passing the budget into law. I
want you to understand the difference.
“What does the MTEF entail? It is giving
us a graphic expectation of a country and of its income, either
perceived, derived or accrued. Now, if the President presents the budget
on Wednesday, which we hope will be presented, the Senate will now go
ahead to approve the MTEF so that it will provide the foundation for us
to examine what has been presented by the President on Wednesday as a
budget of the nation for the 2017 year.”
Buhari had sent the MTEF/FSP, which will
form the basis for the national annual budget for the three years, to
the National Assembly for legislative approval, and had narrowly escaped
being rejected for the second time by the Senate on November 23.
The upper chamber of the National
Assembly condemned the projections in the document as unrealistic, even
though it said the Presidency had set December 1 for the presentation of
the 2017 Appropriation Bill to the legislature.
The senators, who took turns to
criticise the new version of the MTEF/FSP as well as the officials who
prepared the document during the day’s plenary, submitted that it should
be sent back to the Executive to include the “correct” figures showing
the true state of the economy.
The MTEF/FSP had earlier been rejected
by the Senate over the failure by the Executive to include some critical
details in the document.
The Majority Leader, Senator Ali Ndume, had described the first version of the MTEF and FSP as “empty.”
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