Saraki 'guilty as charged' – Presidency

The Presidency has dismissed Senate President Bukola Saraki’s allegation that President Muhammadu Buhari is to blame for the delay in approving the supplementary budget for Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Malam Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, who stated this in a statement in Abuja on Sunday, said on the contrary, the Saraki-led senate should be solely held responsible for the delay.

According to him, the Senate President to look into the mirror and what he will see is his own face.

“He is solely to be held responsible for deliberately driving the nation to this cliff edge as far as the preparations for next elections are concerned.

“It is not true that INEC submitted their draft budget to the Presidency in February. No, it came much later but even then, this is not the real issue.

“The fact that their proposals came well after the President had laid his budget for the year 2018 before the National Assembly meant that their own will be sent as supplementary budget.

“This was clearly stated to them by the Minister of Budget and National Planning,’’ he maintained.

The presidential aide explained that a supplementary budget could not be submitted until the main budget was passed, and so the delay in passing the main budget was the reason for the delay.

The National Assembly passed the 2018 budget seven months after the document was submitted to the National Assembly by President Buhari.

He said: “Unless someone has forgotten, the budget was submitted to the National Assembly and it took the Saraki-led National Assembly seven months to release it.”

He said there was no way President Buhari could have submitted a supplementary budget while the main one was still pending, adding that “it is never done.

“Because Saraki did not return the main budget, we could not have submitted the supplementary one”.

Shehu noted that after the long delays, the President was pained to sign “the much distorted, butchered and debauched document”.

While signing the budget, President Buhari said that he was compelled to sign it so as not to keep the economy continuously on a standstill.

In his words: “When I submitted the 2018 Budget proposals to the National Assembly on November 7, 2017, I had hoped that the usual legislative review process would be quick, so as to move Nigeria towards a predictable January-December financial year.”

The presidential aide further said that, “it is also worthy of note that this is the first time in Nigeria’s history that a government would bring together the cost of an election in one budget, with each agency involved invited to defend their portion of the budget before the National Assembly.

“It is all part of the transparency that this government is known for.’’

He observed that in the past, “governments would approve INEC budgets and funding without a breakdown, often using ways and means to fund it. Not so under President Buhari’’.