Budget
Padding: President Muhammadu Buhari’s avowed determination to punish
culprits who smuggled foreign items into the 2016 budget and who caused
both national and international embarrassment are back to work, Economic
Confidential can report.
Investigation
by the Economic Intelligence Magazine indicates that the officials who
were sanctioned by their deployment outside Federal Ministry of Finance
have since resumed duties in the same Ministry without the highly
publicized punishment the President promised while speaking to Nigerians
resident in Saudi Arabia.
President Muhammadu
Buhari had in February this year while speaking in Saudi Arabia
threatened to punish all those who were involved in the padding of the
budget.
Apart
from the removal of Director General of Budget Office and deployment of
several directors and senior officials from the Ministry, President
Buhari also merged the budget office with the Ministry of Planning.
About
15 senior officials from other Ministries and Departments were posted
to the Budget Office to replace the sanctioned officials that were
recalled to Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation.
Other
Ministries involved in the un-wholesome attitudes include but not
limited to Federal Ministry of Finance, Federal Ministry of Education,
Health, Agriculture and Rural Development, Trade and Investment, and
Interior Ministry.
Meanwhile,
Economic Confidential learnt that there has been an unhealthy rivalry
between the Ministry of Finance and the Budget and Planning Ministry
which are under the supervision of Kemi Adeosun and Udo Udoma
respectively over who should superintend over budget processes and
implementations in the country.
The development
has no doubt created frictions between the two ministries and lack of
the needed synergy required by both to put up a forward looking national
budget. In view of these concerns, some departments have been created
in the Federal Ministry of Finance that play critical roles on budget
implementation. The departments include: Cash Management, Special
Projects and Technical Services, bringing the total departments in the
Ministry to more than 10. Some of the sanctioned officials are said to
be performing strategic roles on the nation’s economy in these
departments.
Recall that President Muhammadu
Buhari has vowed that all those involved in the padding of the 2016
National Budget, which led to the discrepancies in the document, would
face the most severe punishment.
He said the
alterations, which he described as embarrassing and disappointing, made
the document, which was debated in the National Assembly, completely
different from what was prepared by the Ministry of Budget and National
Planning.
In a statement, then by his Special
Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, the President spoke in
Riyadh while addressing the Nigerian community in Saudi Arabia.
The President was said to have condemned the distortion of the budget proposals by those he called entrenched interests.
Buhari
stated that since he had been holding public offices, he had never
heard about budget padding before the current incident.
He
regretted that the unauthorized alterations had completely changed the
document from the one he presented to the National Assembly.
The
President, however, gave the Minister of Budget and National Planning,
Udo Udoma, a clean bill of health, saying he did a good job.
Buhari
said, “The culprits will not go unpunished. I have been a military
governor, petroleum minister, military Head of State and headed the
Petroleum Trust Fund.
“Never had I heard the words budget padding. Our Minister of Budget and National Planning did a great job with his team.
“The
minister became almost half his size during the time, working night and
day to get the budget ready, only for some people to pad it.
“What
he gave us was not what was finally being debated. It is very
embarrassing and disappointing. We will not allow those who did it to go
unpunished.”
Note: Economic Confidential is a sister publication of PRNigeria
No comments:
Post a Comment