Posted on: 07:47 Mon, 15 Feb 2016



The Senate Leader, Ali Ndume has said the
Senate is working towards approving the 2016
Budget before the end of March.

Ndume said March was the deadline for the
implementation of the 2015 budget, as such it
was the desire of the Senate to pass the 2016
budget before that time, in an interview with
the News Agency of Nigeria on Sunday.

The leader said contrary to reports in the
media, the Senate did not suspend its passage
indefinitely, but only said that February 25 “may
not be feasible”.

He said it was the wish of the National
Assembly to pass the budget five weeks before
the expiry of the period set for the
implementation of the 2015 budget, but that
was not possible due to some errors.

Ndume said: “We have not postponed it
indefinitely.

“We are saying that with the developments that
we are seeing as the time goes on, the 25th
February deadline we gave ourselves may not
be realistic.

“That is why we now said that going by this, it
is not possible to say we will come back on
25th and say this is the budget.

“We are not saying that we have suspended it
indefinitely.

“The reason we fixed 25th was because we
wanted to have a gap of five weeks.”

Ndume said the gap would have enabled the
Senate fix whatever issues that needed to be
handled before the lapsing of the March 31
deadline for the implementation of the 2015
budget.

Ndume said the leadership of the National
Assembly had met with Ministers to iron out
the grey areas and make corrections to the
contentious areas as well.

The Leader also assured that the Senate would
ensure strict compliance with the
implementation of the budget.

He said that once funds were available, he was convinced that the present administration would ensure thorough implementation of the budget.