The development also comes amidst allegations of budget padding by the senate which led to the sacking of the Director of the Budget Office.
The senate had notified the executive of instances of anomalies between what President Buhari had submitted to it and what it was expected to deliberate on.
The situation was further compounded when some ministers during budget defence sessions at the senate openly denied the documents credited to their ministries, insisting that the original documents have been tampered with.
Explaining the passage of the 2016 budget, John Enoh, Member, Senate Committee on Appropriation, said the senate has done a pruning down of the document to make the proposal realisable.
“In 2016 we have a figure that is less than what the executive has proposed therefore the deficit on projections has lowered considerably than whaty was earlier submitted to it by the executive.
“By that what it means is that the NA has passed a budget that is a lot more realistic for the executive to implement. What we now have is a document that is workable and more achievable for the executive arm to implement and achieve. And this is happening for the first time in the history of the legislature and the country at large,” said Senator Enoh.
Also speaking, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Danjuma Goje and his House of Representatives counterpart, Abdulmumin Jibrin, said the National Assembly passed the harmonised 2016 budget that was formulated on a new template of $38 per barrel, different from what had existed in the past 16 years.
Addressing a joint press conference after the passage by both chambers, the lawmakers called for more collaboration between the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and the budget office to avoid a reoccurrence of the errors detected in the budget.
Specifically, Goje advised the executive to henceforth present the budget early to the National Assembly to ensure a quick passage.
He assured that the National Assembly will diligently embark on its oversight to make sure the budget when signed into law is fully implemented in the interest of Nigerians.
“One major high point of this budget is that the N500 billion earmarked by President Muhammadu Buhari for the various special intervention programmes to assist the poor hasn’t been tampered with in order to alleviate the sufferings of our people,” Goje added.
On his part, Jibrin said that the National Assembly has for the first time introduced a novelty by reducing the aggregate expenditure of the Federal Government as against the practice of increasing the budget since 1999.
He explained that the lawmakers decided on this option because of the dwindling revenues from oil and other sources.
He said that the National Assembly has been able to substantially clean up the budget, adding that “this is the first time there is a transition not only from one government to another, but from one political party to another and we are sure that the executive will have learnt its lessons, and we are sure these issues will not repeat themselves.”
He declared, however, that there were some omissions detected in the budget which both the executive and National Assembly attempted to address, such as the improper computation of the allowances of National Youth Corps members that will be mobilised for 2016.
It would be recalled that, last month, Senate and the House of Representatives Joint Committee on Appropriation had summoned the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun and her budget and Planning counterpart, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma to appear before it and explain the reasons behind the 2016 proposed budget mess.
“We took the budget of the IST, which is the investment court, unfortunately we realised what was contained in the 2016 proposal was just the exact copy of the 2015 appropriation; word for word and figure for figure.” Chairman of the House Committee on Capital Markets and other institutions, Tajudeen Yusuf said.
The budget controversy began when lawmakers alleged that the original document presented by Buhari on December 22 had been substituted. The president said in a January 19 letter to lawmakers that the original document contained errors.
However, despite denials by top government functionaries that the 2016 Appropriation Bill was not padded, President Muhammadu Buhari, admitted to an audience, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that all those involved in the ‘padding’ of the document ‘will face the most severe punishment.’
The development also follows the rejection by the Health minister, Dr Isaac Adewole of the budget proposal of his ministry before the Senate, claiming the document has been doctored by unknown persons.
Addressing the Nigerian Community in Saudi Arabia, the president condemned the distortion of the budget proposals by interests, insisting that that the unauthorised alterations had completely changed the document from the one he presented to the National Assembly.
“The culprits will not go unpunished. I have been a military governor, petroleum minister, military Head of State and headed the Petroleum Trust Fund, never had I heard the words ‘budget padding’.
“Our Minister of Budget and National Planning did a great job with his team. The Minister became almost half his size during the time, working night and day to get the budget ready, only for some people to pad it.
“What he gave us was not what was finally being debated. It is very embarrassing and disappointing. We will not allow those who did it to go unpunished.”