OrderPaperToday – President Muhammadu Buhari has accused the National Assembly of jerking up the 2018 appropriation bill and lamented huge cut of allocations proposed by the executive.
The President made the accusation today while signing the 2018 budget into law.
According to him, the insertions of projects by the National Assembly will “be difficult to execute.”
The federal legislture while passing the bill on the 16th of May added N508 billion to the proposed N8.6 trillion, making it N9.1 trillion.
In Buhari’s speech, he disclosed that 6,403 projects amounting to N578 billion were added by the National Assembly, adding that the federal legislature also made some cuts “amounting to N347 billion in the allocations to 4,700 projects submitted to them for consideration.”
President Buhari remarked that “many of the projects cut are critical and may be difficult, if not impossible, to implement with the reduced allocation. Some of the new projects inserted by the national assembly have not been properly conceptualized, designed and costed and will, therefore, be difficult to execute.
“Furthermore, many of these new projects introduced by the national assembly have been added to the budgets of most MDAs with no consideration for institutional capacity to execute them or the incremental recurrent expenditure that may be required.”
He also identified the projects from the executive that are affected which are, Mambilla power plant, Second Niger Bridge/ancillary roads, the East-West Road, Bonny-Bodo Road, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and Itakpe-Ajaokuta rail project whose budget were reduced by N11.5 billion.
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