2019 Budget: Reps Open Debate, Uncover Irregular Figures In Proposals
2019 Budget: Reps Open Debate, Uncover Irregular Figures In Proposals
The House
of Representatives has discovered irregularity of figures in the 2019 budget as
it commenced debate on the general principles of the Appropriation Bill at
plenary, yesterday.
Specifically,
the affected Ministries and Departments of government include Education, Budget
and National Planning, Finance and Office of Secretary to the Government of the
Federation, SGF.
In the
financial proposals of the respective ministries, the figures for various
subheads did not tally with the total amount earmarked as the total budget of
the agencies. The discrepancies were discovered by Chika Adamu from Niger
State, shortly after the Leader of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, moved the
motion for debate on the bill.
Gbajabiamila
and the Deputy Speaker, Yusuf Lasun, had taken turns to make contributions to
the debate. Adamu, who craved the indulgence of the House to make what he
described as necessary observations in the budget estimates before formally
advancing his personal views on the general principles of the bill, said: “I
want to, before my contribution, raise some issues, particularly some errors I
noticed in the national budget.
“As everyone knew, the schedule in the budget
consists of Part A, which is the statutory transfers; Part B, which is the debt
servicing; Part C, recurrent expenditure and Part D, capital expenditure. “I
will raise some issues, which have to do with one, Ministry of Education; two,
Ministry of Finance; and three, Ministry of Budget and National Planning and
then, one observation with the office of the Secretary to the Government of the
Federation, SGF. “When you go to the Education Ministry, in Part C, which is
the recurrent expenditure, which consists of both personnel and overhead, you
will realise that the budget is N462.2 billion, but when you go to the summary
of the budget by the MDAs, number 41: 0.5.1.8 personnel now changed to about
N539.6 billion. “When you go to Ministry of Finance, the budget of the ministry
in the recurrent expenditure in Part C is N10.8 billion. However, there
is also an error when you go to the summary, which is number 21: 2.2.0.
Personnel is N7.4 billion, which is okay, but when you go to the overhead, it
now becomes N2.26 trillion and, therefore, that has also changed. “In the
Ministry of Budget and Planning, in Part C is N9.3 billion, but, however, when
you go to the summary by MDAs, which is number 28: 0.2.3.8 personnel in the
Ministry of Budget and Planning, it has now become N66.21 billion. Then
overhead also changed there; it is now N832.2 billion. Then the total, which is
personnel and overheard in that aspect, has now become N1.49 trillion.
“The
capital also has changed to about N655.9 billion, now giving us a total
allocation of the Ministry of Budget and Planning, to N2.15 trillion, instead
of N9.3 billion. “Also, at the capital, which is D aspect, page 118 appeared
only as ‘Federation.’ We don’t have any MDA called federation, but when I
continued with the research, I realised that in that federation, there is a
capital component of N31.8 billion. I found that the federation is in the
office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, so why did
they write federation?.”
Adamu’s
observations swiftly rattled the House and obviously prompted the speaker,
Yakubu Dogara, to call for concurrence of the errors by other members who might
have observed such discrepancies. Dogara calls for reconciliation Securing some
responses, especially from Aliyu Pategi from Kwara State who corroborated
Adamu’s submissions, the speaker asked the deputy speaker, Gabajabimila,
Pategi, Adamu, Omidiran and the Clerk of the House to approach his desk for an
aside on the issue. After about 20 minutes of meeting, Dogara announced that
there were irreconcilable differences in the estimates of some ministries and
as such limited the debates to just the general principles of the bill. He
asked the relevant House Committee chairman to liaise with the Ministry of
Budget and National Planning for reconciliation of the figures before another
debate day.
Gbajabiamila
reacts Speaking with journalists on the irregularities, Leader of the House,
Gbajabiamila said: “Mathematical errors in figures are things that are normal.
At worst, it may reflect some kind of tardiness but it doesn’t take away the
substance and the merit of what we are debating. “And if you know the rules of
the House very well, we are not here to debate the intricate details of the
figures and numbers of the budget, we debate the general principles. That
is what the debate is about.
“It is a
good observation and I believe it has been noted. Like the speaker said, it
will be sent back; the communication will be done. They will correct the
figures just here and there, that may have the potential of distorting the
numbers. That will be cleaned up.”
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