Malam Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media
and Publicity, who stated this in a statement in Abuja on Sunday, said on the
contrary, the Saraki-led senate should be solely held responsible for the
delay.
The Presidency has dismissed Senate President Bukola Saraki’s allegation
that President Muhammadu Buhari is to blame for the delay in approving the
supplementary budget for Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
According to him, the Senate President to look into the mirror and
what he will see is his own face.
“He is solely to be held responsible for deliberately driving the nation
to this cliff edge as far as the preparations for next elections are concerned.
“It is not true that INEC submitted their draft budget to the Presidency
in February. No, it came much later but even then, this is not the real issue.
“The fact that their proposals came well after the President had laid his
budget for the year 2018 before the National Assembly meant that their own will
be sent as supplementary budget.
“This was clearly stated to them by the Minister of Budget and National
Planning,’’ he maintained.
The presidential aide explained that a supplementary budget could not be
submitted until the main budget was passed, and so the delay in passing the
main budget was the reason for the delay.
The National Assembly passed the 2018 budget seven months after the
document was submitted to the National Assembly by President Buhari.
He said: “Unless someone has forgotten, the budget was submitted to
the National Assembly and it took the Saraki-led National Assembly seven months
to release it.”
He said there was no way President Buhari could have submitted a
supplementary budget while the main one was still pending, adding that “it is
never done.
“Because Saraki did not return the main budget, we could not have
submitted the supplementary one”.
Shehu noted that after the long delays, the President was pained to
sign “the much distorted, butchered and debauched document”.
While signing the budget, President Buhari said that he was compelled to
sign it so as not to keep the economy continuously on a standstill.
In his words: “When I submitted the 2018 Budget proposals to the
National Assembly on November 7, 2017, I had hoped that the usual legislative
review process would be quick, so as to move Nigeria towards a predictable
January-December financial year.”
The presidential aide further said that, “it is also worthy of note that
this is the first time in Nigeria’s history that a government would bring
together the cost of an election in one budget, with each agency involved
invited to defend their portion of the budget before the National Assembly.
“It is all part of the transparency that this government is known for.’’
He observed that in the past, “governments would approve INEC budgets and
funding without a breakdown, often using ways and means to fund it. Not so
under President Buhari’’.
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