| Labour Min. Dr. Chris Ngige |
The Minister of Labour and
Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, has dismissed elements of distrust between the
executive and the legislature over the 2016 budget, saying the budget mess was
essentially a creation of some bureaucrats, technocrats and civil servants, who
tampered with the document out of mischief to feather their nests.
Ngige, who gave detailed analysis
of the budget process, especially the way it works in the legislature being a
former senator, described the controversial Lagos-Calabar Rail Project as
"a very big omission" from the budget, adding that the error has
since been admitted and rectified accordingly.
"However, on the 2016
budget, people should look at it and look at the genesis of the problem. The
genesis of the problem arose from the fact that when the calls for budget were
done, some bureaucrats, some technocrats, some civil servants tampered with the
budget out of mischief, just to feather their nests. Some other group of civil
servants, out of carelessness or ignorance missed out vital items in the
budget. So, the budget that first went to the National Assembly had a lot of
omissions, and corrections were done. And details were not in the aggregate sum
of the budget. So, the budget was actually returned and the national planning
commission that was in charge of budget to effect the corrections and omissions
and send back. It's the ministries that detected these omissions and applied to
the planning commission for corrections,’’ he said.