President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed that he would never allow budget padding, which just entered the nation’s budgetry lexicon in 2016 to happen again in his government.
“I am waiting for the 2017 Budget to be brought to us in Council. Any sign of padding anywhere, I will remove it.”
President Buhari, who received in audience today, Friday, members of the Governance Support Group (GSG), led by Hon. Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, lamented what he called the distortions in 2016 appropriation bill, in which series of rogue projects and figures were injected into the financial document.
Emphasizing that such thing won’t happen to next year’s budget, President Muhammadu Buhari confessed again that since 1975, when he served the country as governor, oil minister, head of state, and Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), he had never heard the word ‘padding’ till the 2016 Budget.
Buhari said that his government stands by its tripod campaign promises of securing the country, reviving the economy, and fighting corruption, but lamented that some people are deliberately turning blind eyes to prevailing realities in the country.
“They don’t want to reflect on the situation in which we are, economically. They want to live the same way; they simply want business as usual,” he said.
On violence that attended rerun elections in the country, President Buhari said: “I agonized over the elections in Kogi, Bayelsa and Rivers states. We should have passed the stage in which people are beheaded, and killed because of who occupies certain offices. If we can’t guarantee decent elections, then we have no business being around. Edo State election was good, and I expect Ondo State election to be better.”
Speaking on the anti-corruption cases before the courts, the President said he believed the cleansing currently going on “will lead to a better judiciary. When people are sentenced, Nigerians will believe that we are serious.”
President Buhari equally told his guests that the progress being made in agriculture and exploitation of solid minerals “gives a lot of hope. Our grains go up to Central African Republic, to Burkina Faso, but they can’t buy all the grains harvested this year. And next season should be even better. We will focus on other products like cocoa, palm oil, palm kernel, along with the grains. We can start exporting rice in 18 months, and we are getting fertilizers and pesticides in readiness for next year.”
Speaking on behalf of members of GSG, Hon. Nwajiuba said that the government had succeeded to a large extent on the security and anti-corruption fronts, adding that the group was positive that the economy would soon experience a turnaround, “as the government is working very hard in that direction.”
The group said the biggest constituency of the President was the poor and lowly, and thus recommended what it calls “a social re-armament of the poor.” [myad]
