President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed that “the distortions that occurred in Budget 2016, in which a series of rogue projects and figures were injected into the financial document,” will not happen in next year’s budget.
According to a statement issued by Femi Adesina, presidential spokesman, Buhari said this when he received members of the Governance Support Group (GSG), led by Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, at the state house, Abuja, on Friday.
In the statement, the president said he would remove any form distortion to the budget.
“I am waiting for the 2017 budget to be brought to us in council. Any sign of padding anywhere, I will remove it,” he said.
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He re-iterated that he had been in government since 1975, as governor, oil minister, head of state, and chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), “and never did I hear the word ‘padding’ till the 2016 budget.”
He promised that such a thing would never happen again under his watch.
The president said the government stands by its tripod campaign promises of securing the country, reviving the economy, and fighting corruption, but lamented that some people are deliberately turning blind eyes to prevailing realities in the country.
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“They don’t want to reflect on the situation in which we are, economically. They want to live the same way; they simply want business as usual,” he said.
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