2016 Budget: Some Programmes Are Unrealistic- APC Senator
An All Progressives Congress (APC) senator from Gombe state, and chairman of the senate committee on appropriation, Danjuma Goje, has described some programmes in the 2016 budget proposal as ‘not feasible’.
Goje, who said this in Abuja on Thursday at an interactive session with some ministries and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), noted that there was no clear implementation strategies on the N500 billion intervention fund for poor Nigerians, free feeding for school pupils, among others.
While noting that the national assembly was in support of the programme, Goje said that implementing it in 2016 might not be feasible.
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He said that there were areas in which the executive could not give satisfactory explanations, as the committee had to push hard in order to get more explanations to details that were not conniving.
He, therefore, suggested that the money be added to the budgetary allocation for sectors like power, transport and health.
He said, “There is no detailed, clear cut structure laid down for implementation of this project because what we have in this budget is N300 billion recurrent and N200 billion capital. We had to push hard yesterday to get some details which were not convincing.
“For instance, the explanation we got was that N5, 000 would be given to one million Nigerians. Who would choose the one million people, what structures you have in place to make sure that you choose the right people?
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“You want to give money to about one million market women or there about and in my place we do not have many market women. How would they choose the market women that would represent all interests?
“We have not got clear explanations to these numerous issues surrounding the implementation of this programme. Even the afternoon school feeding contained in the budget is not feasible because some students study under non-conducive environment. Will feeding them enhance their learning?” Goje asked.
“We are all happy with the programme and I am a party man to the core but what needs to be done, needs to be done very well. I think there is a need to do greater work on implementation; otherwise this money will go down the drain.
“We would rather use this money to solve our problem; use this year to do very sound ground work for implementation so that the programme can take off next year,” he said.
