NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TODAY

In today’s plenary, the Senate continued deliberations on 2018 budget Appropriations Bill before it after the following bills scalled First reading:

i.                    National Centre for Disease Control and Prevention

ii.                  National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency

iii.                Public Complaints Commission Act

The debates on the appropriations resumed in earnest. These are the major highlights of their contributions:

·         Implementation of budgets is a major issue

·         Performance of 2017 budget at 15% as at date is woeful

·         IGR projection is out of tune with current reality

·         NNPC has not been transparent in making their contributions to federal treasury

·         CBN has not been remitting their operating surplus as required of them

·         $45 oil price benchmark does not represent current reality, it should be increased to $50

·         We are paying a whopping N2.0T to repay our debts when our Capital expenditure is N2.4T

·         MDAs are too large and unproductive

·         Number of MDAs should be cut down to reduce wastes

·         Any more borrowing might be dangerous to our economy

·         Our budget did not indicate seriousness to tackle poverty, unemployment, dearth of infrastructure aggressively

·         Recurrent expenditure is taking the largest chunk of our budget

·         Need to commercialise some MDA that are moribund but just incurring overheads

·         Only N450b has so far been released for 2017 budget out of N2.3T budgeted

·         The details on 2018 budget proposal do not indicate a roll over of 2017 capital expenditure aspect

·         Procurement on 2017 which probably would have been started will suddenly be abandoned

·         The Private sector its likely to have also spent money into the process of the 2017 implementation suddenly to be abandoned

·         MTEF is not yet passed, so how did the executive come up with the projections of their budget

·         It against the law to prepare a budget before MTEF

·         In 2017, we projected 2.3mbp for oil production, and ended up with 1.9mbp, so what the basis of projecting 2.3mbp again in 2018

·         In revenue, we projected 2.5T in 2017 and received only 1.5T, so it doenst make sense projecting higher revenue in 2018

·         In Education, UN prescribed at 24% of fiscal budget for Education, but we have barely 7% of ours allocated to education

·         Our education deserves adequate funding

·         Budget office said they will roll over 60% of 2017 Capital expenditure to 2018

Senator Walker in his presentation said, the budget will require Jesus Christ or Mohammed for it to succeed.

#JesusIsTheGreatest