'2016 Budget Delay Shows Buhari's Unpreparedness'

Eze Onyekpere, the executive director of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), has said the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is not ready for governance. According to him, the failure of the Buhari-led administration to present the 2016 Budget proposals to the National Assembly, less than two months to the end of the year showed how unprepared they are in matters of governance, Vanguard reports. Onyekpere said this yesterday, November 19, during a round-table meeting on Budget Transparency and Public Engagement in Budget Process, following the release of the Open Budget Survey 2015, in Abuja. He said: “Right now, we don’t have the Medium Term Economic Framework (MTEF) to underpin the budget and we don’t have the budget. The implication is that the budget is going to be presented very late and it may not be ready until the end of the first quarter of 2016, which has been the usual tradition. The implications are not funny for the administration of the Nigerian people. “That means that the capital budget will be delayed and by the time they approve it in March, April or May, it will be raining season and all out-door constructions will stop.” Onyekpere added that the budget is supposed to address the people’s needs but its delay would have consequences on the people. The CSJ director noted that continuing the cycle of poor capital budget implementation would mean attending to less of the poor and addressing less of the needs of the Nigerian people who are suffering infrastructure deficit On Wednesday, November 18, Buhari sent a supplementary budget of N465bn to the Senate for approval due to shortage of funds to carry out important projects in the country. The president alsoasked the Senate to grant his request to borrow the sum of N2.10 trillion to finance the budget.