Legislators Uncover Errors in 2016 Budget, Set To Remove N37billion Items 

Lawmakers have uncovered 25 errors in the 2016 Appropriation bill, it was gathered on Wednesday, March 16.

The items involved are allocated about N37, 025, 238, 407. Of the amount, about N21,623,323,649 voted for office repairs was rated “avoidable” by the Senate and House of Representatives committees on Appropriation.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Danjuma Goje and the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Jibrin Abdulmumin, were making frantic efforts last night to meet Tuesday’s deadline for the passage of the budget.

The two committees and the Ministry of Budget and National Planning were making last-minute consultations as at press time.

The errors were discovered at the last stage of the budget’s consideration.

It was learnt that the errors spotted by the National Assembly tallied with the input from many Civil Society Organisations, including CLP/ Reclaim Naija.

The mistakes are in the following eight areas: Duplication of budget line items; Budget items with quantities not specified;
Budget items with no location; Large amount of money being appropriated for rehabilitation/repairs of office /residential buildings and purchase of office furniture and fittings; Budget items repeated over the past four years; Curious budget line items; Non-priority budget items; and Wrongly classified budget items

A document obtained from the National Assembly lists the breakdown of the errors, including curious budget line items(N6, 411,661, 956); duplication of projects(N3,567,605, 395); non-priority project items(N5, 422, 647,407); office repairs/ rehabilitation(N21, 623, 323, 649).

A source in one of the committees said: “We have identified 25 new errors in the budget involving about N37, 025, 238, 407billion.