MDAs N1.5bn problematic budget

Ministries Department and Agencies MDA had expended not less than N1.2 trillion to prepare the faulty 2023 budget for the approval of the National Assembly.

President of the Senate, Senator Ahmed Lawan, had described the 2023 budget as a document filled with errors, causing serious reconciliation problems for the twin committees of finance of the national assembly.

President Muhammadu Buhari presented the 2023 appropriation bill of the 2,208-page document before the national assembly worth, N20.5trn in October 2022.

Investigations by the Sunday Tribune on the appropriation for the preparation of the 2023 budget revealed that not less than 282 Ministries Department and Agencies spent N1,573,325,180 for what it tagged “Budget Expenses and Administration.”

The President of the Senate has said that the delay in the passage of the 2023 budget was because the national assembly committees on appropriation were confronted with “problems” that made it difficult for earlier reconciliation for passage on the earlier date of Thursday, 23rd December 2022.

Lawan was quoted to have said the budget “came with some problems” that were discovered by the national assembly committees.

He went on to say “The Appropriations Bill came to the National Assembly with some problems and when our Committees on Appropriations in the Senate and House of Representatives started to reconcile the figures of what has been done and what was presented.

“The problems became obvious and not easy to deal with and the Committees had to start a process of cleaning up the bill.

“That process engaged the Executive because the problem came from them. They (committees) only concluded that yesterday,” the eve of the earlier date for the budget passage.

Sunday Tribune can report that the various agencies of government had sufficient appropriation for the preparation of the 2023 budget.

For instance, the extant budget whose capital component has been extended to terminate in the first quarter of 2023, a whopping N1bn was appropriated in the Ministry of Finance with code 22021051 for what it described as “Budget Preparation, BPP, Execution, and Reporting.”

Further inquiry on the 2022 budget by the Sunday Tribune showed that besides the various sums of tens of million deployed by various ministries departments mental and agencies, the Budget office of the federation plowed N107,532,160 into the preparation of the budget which President Muhammadu Buhari presented to the Senate on October 7, 2022.

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