2016 BUDGET: Senate Rules Out Inclusion Of Lagos-Calabar Rail Project

THE Senate on Tuesday stated that the National Assembly will not revisit the 2016 Nigeria’s Appropriation Budget with a view to include the N60 billion Lagos-Calabar rail project expunged from it, rather offered to reconsider the project in a supplementary budget after the Present has given assent to the incomplete budget .

Briefing newsmen after a closed-door session held ahead of yesterday’s plenary, Senate Committee Chairman on Information and Public Affairs, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, said the upper legislative arm will maintain its earlier position to revisit the budget despite the inadequacies which characterized it.

However, Abdullahi added that the National Assembly may reconsider the rail project if resubmitted as a supplementary budget only after signing the appropriation budget by the President.  

“Today, we have resumed plenary having come back from our recess and we went into an executive session which is the normal practice to welcome one another and discuss issues that we believe pertain to the burning issues on ground.

“In this case, the issue of the 2016 budget and the smooth workings of the Senate and the National Assembly were discussed. Now, the statement we issued yesterday remains unchanged.
“Today, all we did was to confirm what exactly is the true picture of this situation and in my capacity as a spokesman of the Senate, I did not go to press with falsehood.

“One thing that is obvious is we have passed the budget, so what is important now is for the budget to be signed. The constitution has taken note of this kind of scenario where you may have omissions or shortfalls of allocations and Section 81 of the constitution is very clear on what you need to do which is to sign the budget and then submit a supplementary Appropriation Bill.

“I want to assure you that the Senate is not unmindful of the cries of Nigerians that we said, for example, that the Lagos-Calabar rail project was not in the budget does not in any way undermine its importance.

“It is a very, very important project for this nation to embark on and so the National Assembly, the Senate is open if the executive brings a supplementary appropriation with respect to this issue and any other issue that they feel very strongly about.
“We are ready and willing to consider such but the most important point to note is that we want to remain guided by the provisions of the constitution.

“I think if we do that, all these raging controversies will be off our backs and we can all concentrate and put our energies to begin the process of implementing the 2016 budget so that those dividends of democracy – the youth unemployment issue, the empowerment of women, the social intervention programme, the infrastructure programmes, the agricultural programmes, can be addressed. The rains are already here and all other projects that we know will have to be kick started,” he said.

From our investigations, most of the people interviewed on the issue supported the President’s refusal to give assent to the budget stating that the lawmakers have hidden agenda questioning the rationale in expunging a railway project meant to serve the people in the South but approved the one from the North which is indicative of marginalization. The opinion polls also condemned the wisdom in allowing the railway project in the North through the Appropriation Budget but that of the South under a supplementary budget, and called on the lawmakers to be careful to avoid setting the nation into ethnic crisis.