The Executive Director of the Centre for Social Justice, CSJ, Mr. Eze Onyekpere, has faulted the failure of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to present the 2016 Budget proposals to the National Assembly, one and a half months to the end of the current Fiscal Year.
Onyekpere made the stance known on Thursday, November 19, 2015 during a round-table meeting on Budget Transparency and Public Engagement in Budget Process, following the release of the Open Budget Survey 2015, in Abuja.
He stated that the current administration has demonstrated its unpreparedness for governance.
Onyekpere noted that by now, the National Assembly ought to have approved the 2016 budget and the reviewed Medium Term Economic Framework, MTEF, going by the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Commission Act, 2007.
He said: “That the executive has not presented the 2016 budget to the National Assembly until now shows the unpreparedness of the current administration in matters of governance.
“Right now, we don’t have the MTEF to underpin the budget and we don’t have the budget. The implication is that the budget is going to be presented very late and it may not be ready until the end of the first quarter of 2016, which has been the usual tradition. The implications are not funny for the administration of the Nigerian people.
“That means that the capital budget will be delayed and by the time they approve it in March, April or May, it will be raining season and all out-door constructions will stop.
“So we are continuing the cycle of poor capital budget implementation and of course that would mean addressing less of the needs of the Nigerian people who are suffering infrastructure deficit and also attending to less of the poor because the majority of Nigerians are poor and the budget is expected to address their needs.”
