Senator Faults Buhari On Late Submission Of 2016 Budget

The senator representing Osun central senatorial distict, Olusola Adeyeye on Thursday, January 21 faulted the late submission of 2016 budget stating that it gives shorter period of time for consideration.

He said this while making contributions on the floor of the Senate during the consideration of the Budget proposal.
He blamed the National Assembly for the failure of previous budgets comparing the United States Congress that takes eight months to pass the budget.

“I want to remind us that this is not the first time since 1999 that National Assembly has given itself too short a time to do justice in the consideration of our budget.

“I am saying this with all due respect to all of us and those who have served in the House of Representatives, I want to give us one pertinent information.

“11 days from today, Monday Feb. 1, President Obama must by law, submit the budget for 2017, the US Congress always has eight months to look at the budget and pass,” he said.

READ ALSO: Nigeria Needs A Better Budget – Senator 

He promised to submit a bill to the senate at the within a month which will mandate the President and all future presidents regardless of their party to submit the budget early enough for consideration.

However, he defended the 115 billion naira allocation to the National Assembly saying that it represented only 1.8 per cent of the N6.08 trillion budget proposal.

Also, Adeyeye suggested the need to expand the nation’s tax framework and to include fines for some punishments stressing that 54 per cent of the $3.8 trillion US budget was sourced from tax alone and Nigeria must go back to what it did in the days of our founding fathers.

“If we are going to move this country forward, we must go back to what we did in the days of Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and Nnamdi Azikiwe.

“Nobody in my village will go to his farm until he can produce his tax receipt, we need ingenuity to bring this to pass.We must begin to tax things like cigarette, alcohol; you beat your wife you pay heavily.

“Text messages cost 3.81 naira a page: if we add just 1 naira to a page of text message and we say that money belongs to government we will make billions.

“We must install toll roads but that is not enough: across the world, when you park at any airport you pay per hour; we must do what the rest of the world does.

“We must begin to tax allowances, Nigeria is the only country that shelters the bulk of the earnings of its workers and call them allowances. You don’t want your allowances taxed? They will be taxed,” he stressed.

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Adeyeye also called on the removal of government agencies and parastatals who do not perform their duties.

He also urged the lawmakers to keep party affiliations aside and always remember that they represent Nigerians and not their political party.

“When things go wrong, if you are APC you will blame PDP, if you are PDP you will blame APC.

“I duff my hat to the former chairman of public account who brought to this senate most germane relevant document about abuses in the system but we in this chamber refused to consider it.

“I pray to God that under your leadership, whatever is brought must be considered otherwise God will judge all of us beginning from you Mr President.

“We must go back to operation 504: there was a time when our President rode Peugeot 504. Go and stand in front of Eagle square, see what cars judges, senators and ministers are riding,” he said. 

 

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