Presidency, Senate row deepens over expenditure framework

Minister of Planning and National Budget, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma

Hopes of getting the 2017 budget bill early were dashed, yesterday, as row between the Senate and the Presidency over alleged shoddy preparation of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) worsened.

The Senate vowed it would not consider the document, saying it was empty and lacked legal the requirement to qualify it as MTEF.

The upper chamber also expressed displeasure over failure of the Budget and National Planning Minister, Udoma Udo Udoma, to honour its invitation, to explain the shortcomings of the MTEF document.

Adopting a motion by Senate leader, Mohammed Ali Ndume, the House said it would not deliberate further until the deficiencies were rectified.

It also alerted that the Federal Government might have been ‘padded’ with people working to frustrate its programmes.

Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, yesterday, disclosed that the 2017 budget was ready but could not be presented to the National Assembly because the legislators had not finished work on the MTEF.

The Minister, who spoke at a Presidential Economic Communications Workshop, said once the MTEF had been approved, the Presidency would match it with the proposed budget and forward it to the Assembly.

The Federal Government is also fine-tuning the National Economic Recovery Plan, to re-launch the economy in the path of growth. It is expected to be ready for implementation December.

Ndume rose through a point of order and called the attention of the Senate to a newspaper report on Wednesday, where Udoma was said to have blamed the Assembly for the delay in the presentation of the budget by President Buhari. He noted that the Presidency and not the National Assembly was delaying the presentation.

Ndume said: “If you look at this document that they called MTEF, it is empty; it is empty and doesn’t contain anything. If you have nothing, how do you consider something? Going through it and knowing that it is empty, on October 19, I forwarded a letter to the Minister, to meet the Senate on a way out. But he failed to turn up.”

Add us on BBM 7B3E0875 for more updates