The Senate president, Bukola Saraki, has condemned the 2016 budget presented by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The Senate president, Bukola Saraki, who entertained questions from senate correspondents after commissioning the newly upgraded and refurbished senate press centre at the national assembly in Abuja, on Tuesday, February 2, described the budget as ambitious.

The Senate president explained that for the budget to be genuine and successful, the non-oil and independent revenue generating sectors should be made the crux.

He disclosed that the lawmakers would concentrate on the revenue generating sectors and make sure all leakages are clogged. He expressed optimism that despite the fact that the budget proposal was ambitious, it could be accomplished if all that was necessary to make it work was put in place.

When the Senate president was asked if the 2016 budget is implementable considering the fall in crude oil price at the international market, he said: “I think this is one of the reasons why we are having the MDAs defend their proposals before the committees to be able to test some of the scenarios and some of the assumptions, particularly on the revenue side.

“If you look at the revenue, out of about N3.8trillion, N3trillion is coming from non-oil and independent revenue. The success of the budget, in my own view, is less on the benchmark. It is more on those two items, non-oil revenue and independent revenue, and that is why we directed our Committee on Finance and other relevant Committees to really scrutinize the revenue side.

“Even the Senate leadership intends to also engage with the ministries as well to really check those two lines, because that is really where the questions come on whether it is achievable. Before we put our signature to it, we need to be sure that those funds are there.

“I believe they are ambitious but it is a good sign, because it begins to make us less dependent on oil… because if N830billion is coming from oil revenue and it is only 23%, even if the price of oil goes down or up, we are not really so much vulnerable than the time when oil revenue was accounting for 70 of our revenue. From that point of view, I believe that once we can do that, it is achievable.”

Saraki urged the executive arm of government to instill an appropriate strategy for implementing the budget since the National Assembly was working to pass it without much delay.

The Senate president further disclosed that the national assembly would soon amend the Public Procurement Act to expedite quick implementation of the budget.

“But also talking about being achievable or implementable, already, some of the things we are going to look at and which we are going to advise the executive on is that while we are working on the budget now, they too should also start making a plan on how to implement the budget because what tends to happen is that even after we have passed a budget, the administration or its bureaucracy sometimes makes the budget difficult to be realisable.

“And two areas: one is looking at the procurement process and it is very likely that we will need to come out with an amendment bill as regards to certain areas of the procurement law. That is something that we are likely to come out with very soon. People are looking at that now to see again how we can assist the executive to see that the budget is implementable,” he said.

Saraki, while responding to question on the need for transparency and openness in the National Assembly budget, said: “On the issue of national assembly, I think I’ve kept on repeating this many times. If you remember, even during the time the leadership was constituted, one of the issues that came forward was that we will have an open and transparent eighth senate and I still want to be held to that.

Also during this process, of course, national assembly budget too will also be debated and by the time the final document is out, I can assure you that we are going to move away from the time of one-line item for the national assembly to a national assembly where there will be a break down according to different sections of the institution.”

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