President Muhammadu Buhari may return the 2016 Budget to the National Assembly.
A major reason for this, it was learnt, was the discovery that the revised document sent to him by the lawmakers was hard to work with.
According to Vanguard, the President felt disappointed that provisions for major national projects and programmes were either outrightly removed or funds for such slashed.
The Presidency had, last Thursday, convened an emergency Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on Friday for Ministers to review the budget passed for their respective ministries, departments and agencies.
At the review meeting presided over by Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, Head of the Economic Team, some key projects were found modified or deleted.
These include key projects like the Calabar-Lagos coastal rail line for which Buhari made a provision of N60 billion.
While the Kano-Lagos railway project was untouched, the amount set aside for the completion of the Idu/Kaduna railway project, was slashed by N8.7 billion.
A presidency source who made the revelation to the newspaper, said the Lagos/Calabar coastal railway project and some others to be funded by governments of China and Nigeria, were one of the main reasons for the President’s trip to China.
The source further lamented that while the executive had provided for the completion of all major road projects across the country, the National Assembly reduced the amounts provided and instead included new roads which studies are yet to be conducted.
“The amounts provided by the National Assembly for the projects can neither complete the on-going road projects nor the new ones proposed. At the end of the year, no progress would have been made”, the source said.
Continuing, “Allocations for the purchase of essential drugs for major health campaigns like polio and AIDS, which is fast depleting, were removed and same allocated to provision of ambulance, which the health ministry did not ask for.
“It was also observed that certain provisions made in the areas of agriculture and water resources to further the Federal Government’s diversification project were either removed or reduced while the funds were moved to provisions of rural health facilities and boreholes, for which provisions have been made elsewhere,”it said.
“The President is desirous of signing the Bill into law so that implementation of the provisions could begin in earnest for the benefit of the people. That is why the moment he received the document on Thursday, a meeting was convened for Friday to immediately start work on it,” the source said.
