2016 Budget: Is Pres Buhari Blackmailing National Assembly?

Written by Kayode Solarin

The event concerning the Nigeria 2016 budget and its discrepancies has crowded the internet space in the past few weeks. Nigerians both locally and in diaspora have been throwing in questions especially aiming at this President Buhari’s Administration on why such shocking revelations have been made concerning the Nigeria 2016 Budget.

With the way and manner this administration has preached Change, the talks on fighting corruption and leading a corrupt free administration, one can only stop to wonder why then do we have such embarrassing revelations in the Nigeria 2016 Budget which clearly depicts hidden acts of corruption and deceit.

How such an "incompetent" document passed the muster of presidential scrutiny and snaked its way to the National Assembly, remains befuddling.

How can this administration be expected to be taken very seriously, when its budget for the Ministry of Defence is greater by far than the budget of the Ministry of Science and Technology given Nigeria’s current circumstance? One particular example being that the MOD’s budget for procuring sporting equipment for the Army, exceeds the budget for the same item for the entire federal ministry of Sports and Youth development, the Defence ministry depends on importation of Arms and military equipment, now we ask: where is the defence money going?

Before now, they had been speculations that the Executive had a hand in the Senate President’s trial but now with the discoveries made by the National Assembly and the verdict of the Supreme Court concerning Saraki’s trial, Stella Oduah and Andy Uba’s court cases, one can then say the National Assembly is being blackmailed by the Executive to go easy with the Nigeria 2016 Budget; thereby hindering the discovery of other discrepancies in the Budget.

Is the Executive trying to scare other Legislatures by dragging their colleagues to court? How long can the fate of Nigerians continue to be toyed with?

Going down memory lane, we can recall that this administration never supported the present Speaker of House of Representative, Yakubu Dogara and the Senate President, Bukola Saraki. Could it be possible that this discoveries made in the 2016 Budget wouldn’t have been if they, the Executive had gotten their way in positioning people of their choice in those key positions?

The National Assembly needs to be commended for spotting and bringing to light the gross errors of Nigeria’s 2016 Federal budget. And the Executives should kindly let the Legislature do its work, if not for anything, for the sake and love of country.

- Kayode Solarin is a concerned Nigerian, he writes from Lagos.