After the brouhaha that ensued when the 2016 sixteen budget submitted to the National Assembly went missing, prompting mixed feeling from the general public and confusion between presidency and the National Assembly.
The Senate finally admitted on Thursday that it was not in possession of the 2016 budget presented to it by President Muhammadu Buhari last December. Even a panel of inquiry set up to ascertain the true position and whereabouts of the budget is confused.
Senate President Bukola Saraki gave the hint, following a point of order by Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe that the Senate must make clarification on the status of the 2016 budget.
Saraki was said to have openly accused Ita Enang of “taking” the original budget.
Cutting short Saraki half way, while he was speaking, Abaribe who maintained that the Senate leadership must tell Nigerians the true position of the budget, said he had been inundated with series of calls from people in his constituency seeking to know what happened to the 2016 budget.
He went on to confirm that issues discussed during the executive session of the senate on Tuesday bordered mainly on the missing budget, even as he warned that it was no longer permissible to keep silent on the whereabouts of the budget, a situation, he said, has kept Nigerians in suspense.
Responding, Saraki claimed that the issue was not ripe for deliberation because the panel set up to probe into the the alleged missing 2016 budget was yet to submit its finding to the Senate.
Saraki said, “Because of the importance of this, I will make an exception. You know we are all part of the decision at the close session yesterday and part of that decision we are still waiting for those we have referred to carry out the assignment to come back to us.
“I think they will come back to us by tomorrow. I think they will come back to us by tomorrow and we will go into a closed session and finish up the report and we will be able to debate it properly”.
This remark by the senate president attracted mumbling from some PDP senators who felt it contradicted his earlier position that the panel was yet to submit its report.
Meanwhile President Buhari’s legislative aide, Senator Ita Enang, has said Saraki doesn’t know what he was saying if he thinks that he would come from the Presidency to “take” a budge inside the Senate.
Source edited from nigeriacamera
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