Abuja – Leader of the Senate, Ali Ndume, on Sunday
said the Senate would strive to pass the 2016 Budget before the end of March.
In an interview he said March was the deadline for the implementation of the
2015 budget, as such it was the desire of the Senate to pass the 2016 budget
before that time.
The leader said that contrary to reports in the media, the
Senate did not suspend its passage indefinitely, but only said that the 25th of
February `may not be feasible’.
He said it was the wish of the National
Assembly to pass the budget five weeks before the expiry of the period set for
the implementation of the 2015 budget, but that was not possible due to some
errors.
“ We have not postponed it indefinitely; we are saying that with the
developments that we are seeing as the time goes on, the 25th February deadline
we gave ourselves may not be realistic.
“That is why we now said that going by
this, it is not possible to say we will come back on 25th and say this is the
budget; we are not saying that we have suspended it indefinitely.
“The reason
we fixed 25th was because we wanted to have a gap of five weeks,” he said.
He
said the gap would have enabled the Senate fix whatever issues that needed to
be handled before the lapsing of the March 31 deadline for the implementation
of the 2015 budget.
Ndume said the leadership of the National Assembly had met
with Ministers to iron out the grey areas and make corrections to the
contentious areas as well.
The Leader also assured that the Senate would ensure
strict compliance with the implementation of the budget.
He said that once
funds were available, he was convinced that the present administration would
ensure thorough implementation of the budget.
