The Nigerian National Assembly has declared that the nation’s 2016 revised budget will be passed on March 17, 2016.
“We should be able to lay our report of the 2016 Appropriation Bill before the House and the Senate on 16th of March,” Abdulmumin Jibrin, who chairs the House of Representative budget committee, said. He further stated that the parliament was expected to finish with the budget’s contents by the end of the following day, thus a safe conclusion of March 17th for the passage of a revised budget.
This appears to be headway for the Nigerian parliament, having witnessed disagreements over the budget in a bid to remove all ambiguities last month.
Here is what to expect from the revised 2016 budget:
Reduction of inflated allocations
Repairs and the renovation of existing structures are among the obviously inflated amounts in the proposed budget. From Buhari’s request for N1.4billion houseboats to the proposed amount for the State House clinic and the N4,906,822 proposed for Vice President Osinbajo’s books, alongside misplaced priorities should have been reduced or scrapped by the National Assembly.
Removal of the proposed Aso Rock rent
The proposed N22,321,880 budgeted for Aso rock rent is the most bizarre of all allocations. The readily available question is whom the presidency is paying rent to. This makes it tantamount for the National Assembly to scrap this allocation.