The PDP Senator, who does not want his name revealed, said that the opposition senators in the Upper Chamber are planning a press conference “to state our position on the 2020 Appropriation Bill.”
Another source noted that though there is need to pass the budget on time, “the need to properly scrutinise the fiscal document is even more compelling.”
According to The NATION, the senators are insisting that Appropriation is a serious business, he warned that “a situation where line items in the budget are being glossed over just to pass the budget on time will not do the country any good.”
He noted that while the executive arm of government is empowered to present the budget, the legislature has the authority to consider line by line details of what the executive presented.
He said that “what I know is that no committee true to itself can say it has thoroughly scrutinised the budget of the MDAs.
“At best what is going on in the committees could be described as attempts to fulfill all righteousness.”
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President Muhammadu Buhari presented a budget of N10.33trillion to a joint session of the National Assembly on October 8, 2019.
The Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, had immediately after the presentation of the fiscal document assured that the 2020 budget would be passed before Christmas to enable the country return to a budget cycle of January to December.
Lawan warned heads of MDAs to ensure the defence of their budgets on or before the end of October 2019.
But the deadline of October ending for the conclusion of the budget defence may not be met as many MDAs are yet to defend their budget estimates either in the Senate or in the House of Representatives.
The deadline given by the Senate President may have given room for the grumbling in the chamber.
Most committees seem to be under pressure to meet the deadline thereby giving rise to the apparent rush by the committees to conclude their budget defence.
As of Friday, most of the committees were still battling to meet up.
Another PDP Senator said: “Those complaining should address the press because they would complain behind the door. The issue is that they were there when the Senate President told them that the National Assembly wants to pass the budget before the end of the year.
“That is when they had the opportunity to ask if it is possible? So when you now accept that that can be done, which means you have now given the Senate President the latitude to give you a mandate or give you a timeline for the committees to start doing a rushed job.
“They are supposed to have challenged him and say ‘you must give us time to be thorough in our work.’ But when you now fail to do that at plenary, which means you are bound by whatever condition they have imposed for you to achieve that particular target. And you know Committee chairmen would say ‘yes we can do it, we can do it.
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“You can only scrutinise the report when they now come up with a shoddy job. It is when the Appropriation Committee submits its report and there are loopholes that is when the opposition will say ‘we said it here that it is better we have enough time to do a thorough job than to do a wishy-washy job.
“But for now you cannot stop them in between until they submit their report. They are not in plenary for you to say the minority people would have seen everything all the committees are doing.
“They will not see everything all the committees are doing until the Appropriation Committee submits its report before you know what they have done,” he said.
Efforts to get the reaction of the Senate spokesman, Senator Adedayo Adeyeye and the Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, were not successful as Adeyeye failed to pick his calls while Abaribe’s lines were unreachable.
