Senators’ Forum faults 2012 budget

Posted by admin Budget, Legislature, Senate Sunday, December 18th, 2011

The Senators’ Forum (SF) has faulted the Federal Government’s allocation for the recurrent and capital expenditure in the 2012 budget. The forum said at the weekend that such allocations had shown that government had not learnt from past experiences.

The forum, consisting of past and serving senators, said this at a meeting with Senate President David Mark over the weekend, adding that it would have been better if emphasis was laid more on allocation for capital expenditure than recurrent.

Speaking with newsmen at the event, the Chairman, Senator Kahirat Gwadabe, said government should also look at the over bloated number of staff in government establishment and address it accordingly.
“Where you have over 70 per cent of the budget going to people who work, it is a big burden. I rather see a situation, where 30 per cent goes to recurrent and 70 to capital.”

Gwadabe said the Forum would want government to do a proper audit of the civil service so that “we know the number and what we are getting and when they ask for salary increase, we want to know how it was going to be spread.
Meanwhile, Senate President David Mark had tasked the Forum to rise up as statesmen and fashion out a blue print on how Nigeria could be salvaged from the socio-economic, political and security challenges facing the country.

The Chief of Staff to the Senate president, Senator Anthony Manzo, represented him.
Senator Mark told the SF at the weekend in Abuja that; “this is not the time to sit on the fence and watch things to deteriorate. We must be reminded that whether serving or former senators, we are all stakeholders in the project Nigeria. We must be ready at all times to contribute our quota to make it work.”

National Publicity Secretary of the Forum, Senator Sunday Fajimi, said a colloquium would soon be organized with a view to fashioning out a blue print on how to address the myriad of problems facing the nation.

-Sunwp_posts