The Presidency has handed down details of the alleged distortion of the 2016 budget to the leadership of the National Assembly.
The federal government made the details available to the National Assembly during a meeting on Saturday night between President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo; Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki and the House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, and some ministers in attendance.
According to inside sources, who spoke to Vanguard, the meeting occurred at the Presidential Villa. The executive, alongside the NASS leadership, reviewed the budget and highlighted gray areas in it.
The president was said to have noted that the removal of huge sums of money in the budget was a huge slap in the face to the change agenda of his administration.
Especially the changes made in the areas of infrastructure including the Calabar-Lagos Coastal Railway project and other major agricultural projects.
In light of this, the presidency had asked the leadership of the National assembly to take back the bill and rework it so as to reflect some key projects that was removed by the legislators.
Or the President can assent to the budget as a mere formality, but will go on to introduce a supplementary budget that will reflect the wishes of the administration and Nigerians.
According to Vanguard, some of the projects in the budget that was removed by the National Assembly are:
* N4 billion removed from Ministry of Health budget and added to Code of Conduct Tribunal
* Cost of 80 illegal roads without designs added to Works budget, 30 of them not Federal
* Money meant for Works, power transmission, diverted by lawmakers for tricycles, town halls, boreholes in their constituencies
* 73 illegal projects added to Education budget
* 50 percent of the funds intended for indigent students in the budget of the Education ministry was slashed and added to those of the lawmakers for their state constituencies.
