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| Abdulmumin Jibrin |
Abdulmumin Jibrin, chairman of
the federal House of Representatives committee on appropriation,
says Rotimi Amaechi, minister of transport, does not know his budget. He spoke
in an interview with Channels Television, where he said the executive arm of
government does not even have a budget.
“Let me say this very straight. I
do not believe that the executive arm of government really understands the document
they sent to the national assembly, or they have even studied what we sent back
to them. I have every reason to draw such a conclusion. In the first place, you
saw all the confusion from the point of preparing the budget to the controversy
of bringing the budget to the national assembly, to accusations of trying to
pull it out of the national assembly through subterranean means. Then the
president brings another version to the national assembly. And that very new
version was what heads of MDAs, ministers and the rest came to the national
assembly to disown. So if you want to look at it from that angle, you’ll say
they don’t even have a budget.”
Jubrin added that Ameachi was
still arguing on Sunday over a budget he does not even understand, emphasising
that Calabar-Lagos rail was never in the budget.
“When a statement come from that
part of government, we should begin to think, do they even understand the
document? Yesterday evening, the same minister of transport was still arguing
with the speaker at the presidential villa that the Calabar-Lagos rail was
included in the budget. What does that tell you? It tells you that he doesn’t
even understand his budget. We have a serious situation here. Ordinarily we
would not have raised this issue in public, but this is an executive arm of
government that never had a budget, had issues, and blamed it on the
legislative arm.”
He said some ministers were
appointed weeks before the budget was prepared and tried to change everything
the permanent secretaries and civil servants had done.