Blame National Assembly for non-full implementation of 2012 Budget – Presidency

Special Adviser to the President on Political Affairs, Mr Ahmed Gulak, has said that the National Assembly should be held responsible for the non-full implementation of 2012 Budget.
Gulak, while addressing newsmen in Abuja at the weekend attributed the cause to some actions of the federal legislators.
According to him, the reason was the refusal by members of the National Assembly to pass the budget at the appropriate time and the amendments surgery carried on the original budget presented to it by the Presidency.
He said: “Presentation of budget is one thing while its passage is another. As a remainder, the 2012 Budget was passed by the National Assembly in April, so you do not expect the budget to have been implemented by 80% in September?”
Gulak further said that rather than pointing accusing fingers at the Presidency for non-full implementation of the 2012 budget, the National Assembly should be blamed for the flop.
”If that budget was passed by January 1st, and by September or October, you have not achieved up to 60%, then you can quarrel. Not taking into cognizance all this, amounts to insincerity on our parts.
Let them pass the 2013 budget and let it become effective from January 1st and they will see if the budget is not implemented 100%”, he added.
“Nigerians should know that sometimes the National Assembly makes the implementation of the budget almost impossible. Let me give you an example, if you want to purchase an ambulance for the National hospital and the known price of the ambulance is N6m, and the National Assembly reduces the price to N2m, how can you implement such a budget, how can you buy the ambulance?”.
”Agreed, the National Assembly has the constitutional right to look at the budget, but when they radically change the budget, giving it a radical surgery, the budget becomes almost impossible to implement”,he insisted
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