Senate Majority Leader Ali Ndume raised a motion on Wednesday, November 2 newspaper publication quoting the minister as saying that the national assembly should be blamed for the late passage of the budget.
Ndume said: “We received the MTEF on 30th September instead of submitting it according to law by 1st of September — not later than. That is not even the problem.
“If you look at this document that they call MTEF, it is empty and it doesn’t contain anything. I wrote a letter to the Minister of Budget and National Planning.
“In the third paragraph, I stated, ‘To enable the Senate objectively review the MTEF from a holistic fiscal perspective, we deem it necessary to invite you to a meeting to brief the leadership of the Senate on Tuesday, 1st November.’ But the minister failed to turn up.”
Senate president Bukola Saraki reacted saying that the minister had promised to retract the statement and debunk the publication. He however noted that the issue should be handled maturely.
“This is a very important issue which is why the Leader brought it, it is not an issue of blame games” Saraki said.
“I called the Minister of Budget and he confirmed that he was quoted out of context that he will address this,” Senator Akpan Basssey confirmed.
“It is important to let Nigerians know that we’re ready to take the Budget Planning at any time, this is not time to point fingers” deputy senate president Ekweremadu added.
Meanwhile, Akinwunmi Adesina, former minister of agriculture under ex-president Goodluck Jonathan has kept his promise and given Nigeria $600million out of the $1billion he promised through the Africa Development Bank (AfDB).
The Cable reports that spokesperson for the AfDB Fatima Abubakar confirmed that the executive directors of the bank approved $600 million on Wednesday, November 2.
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