The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL), has applauded the move by Presidency to effect an overhaul of the Budget office by purging it of all identified corrupt officials through the secretary to the Federal Government, Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita.
Following the avalanche of errors, paddings and discrepancies discovered in the 2016 Budget; President Buhari has ordered the mass sack of members of a “Budget Mafia” in the budget office, who masterminded the discrepancies and inflated figures featured in the 2016 budget in a bid to scuttle the new innovations of the current administration and cause national embarrassment to the Buhari Government.
According to latest reports, the “Mafia” was alleged to have proposed a budget of N9.7tn for capital and overhead spending, excluding personnel cost, as against the President’s initial estimate of about N8tn.The Mafia also proposed N3tn as overheads alone out of the N9.7tn, a figure the president later slashed to N163bn.
CACOL calls on the President to go beyond the sack of Mr. Yahaya Gusau, the Director General of the Budget Office others by sacking the Minister of Budget and National Planning who failed to properly peruse such an important national document to identify the paddings and cleanse it of errors before passing it to the President for assent. ‘’We find the appointment of a new Special Adviser on National planning for the Ministry as uncalled for and can only be regarded as a “pat on the back” for the Minister’s inefficiency; for fairness and equity in the overhaul of the Budget Ministry, the Budget Minister should be sacked, to serve as deterrence to intending lethargic Ministers who act like ministerial position is a “chop and sleep“affair.’’ Mr. Debo Adeniran, Executive Chairman averred
CACOL hastens to call on President Buhari to withdraw the Budget and tender an unreserved apology to Nigerians for also failing to properly scrutinize the budget before its presentation. Having been in possession of the budget for two weeks, it is quite negligent of the Office of the Presidency not to have thoroughly perused through and identified defects in the budget before its onward presentation to the National Assembly.
Wale Salami
Media Coordinator, CACOL
080141121208
cacolc@yahoo.com,cacol@thehumanitycentre.org
February 19, 2016.