ABUJA—The Senate yesterday continued debate on the 2016 Appropriation Bill presented by President Muhammadu Buhari, with a call on the executive to to spend borrowed money on capital projects. The debate on the budget ends today after three days.
This came on a day members of the House of Representatives on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, alleged that the budget document contained constitutional breaches.
The Senators agreed that there was the need to limit the expenditure of monies borrowed to fund capital projects, and stressed the need to diversify the economy, following the dwindling price of oil in the international market.They also identified agriculture and solid mineral sectors
as areas the Federal Government should focus on in its drive to source for other means of generating revenues.
Unlike what played out on the first two days where the stiff opposition to the budget came from the opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, a senator from the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC and wife of the national leader of the party picked holes on the budget, saying as a government with Change mantra, the change must trickle down to all Nigerians across board.
Making a passionate case for women, Senator Tinubu noted that what had been set aside for Nigerian women was not reasonable, warning that if there was no amendment to this, the Federal Government might incur the wrath of the women.
Some senators also called on the Federal government to scrap the security vote for governors, against the backdrop that many former governors were alleged to have abused the usage.
Meanwhile, Senate President Bukola Saraki told the Senators yesterday that the senate would round off debate on the 2016 Appropriation Bill today.
With this, the budget will today pass the second reading and would then be committed to the Danjuma Goje-led Senate Committee on Appropriation.
Tinubu said: “Mr President, distinguished colleagues, is it not true with the saying that when we educate the girl-child we have educated the entire nation. The APC in its manifesto mentioned that there is need for an all-encompassing empowerment programmes for Nigerian women, such comprehensive empowerment requires fund which should be included in the budget for implementation.
“Going through the budget for the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, I discovered that the total allocation to the women ministry is so meager and I think it would be the least allocation received that is allotted to a ministry. And when we look at the functions of this ministry, we see that the ministry is divided into two divisions, human resources and capacity building, economic services and women cooperative.”
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