A Federal lawmaker representing Ikpoba Okha Federal Constituency at the National Assembly, Hon. Ehizogie Agbonayinma has urged President Muhammadu Buhari not to only sack junior officers for errors in the 2016 appropriation budget but also the Minister of Budget and National Planning who coordinated the planning.
Hon. Agbonayinma stated this at his Ward 6 Congress in Ikpoba Okha local government area of the state where he said the National Assembly is working with the Presidency to ensure the budget is passed this March.
He expressed disappointment over the satiation with the 2016 budget and noted that while President Buhari has sacked erring junior officers in the ministry, the Minister in charge of coordinating the budget should also be sacked.
“Where you are using almost N800million to update a website of the Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals, so that for me a monumental fraud and I told my colleague in the house, and that has been rectified now and many other areas where we found so many errors.
“President Buhari has already sacked some people and he has also promised to sack more people but I will say what about that the minister who is supposed to be the one to do the right thing. You can’t be sacking junior officers when the head is still there. You must talk to the head who coordinated the budget for the president.
“So it is a disgrace to the head of the ministry and it is a disappointment for the nation and I am happy that the president has done the right thing by correcting them. And we must join hands with the president because if everything goes well in Nigeria, all of us will celebrate and rejoice. Only the president can’t solve the problem of Nigeria alone, it will require the effort of every good citizen of the country to move the nation forward so we must join Mr. President to see that Nigeria succeeds.”
“I think the budget will see the light of day soon and Nigerians will celebrate. A lot of errors did occur; I don’t think it is Mr. President that did it. It is his trusted people and they disappointed him,” he said.
On President Buhari’s refusal to pay the promised N5000 to unemployed youths in the country, he said: “If you look at the budget, the youths are not taken care of and we must put the youth in the budget. We must care for them and at least put the Nigerian first so if you say you don’t have anything for the youth, what are we talking about they are the future of tomorrow.
“If you don’t create something for them, they will create something for us. If we don’t want to engage them positively, they will engage us negatively. So we must start now by putting the youth first”.
