On Wednesday, 26^th of April 2017, the Chairman of the Senate committee on appropriation, Danjuma Goje raised an alarm at the plenary saying that items in the Nigeria’s 2017 budget may have gone missing. The senator stated that the Nigerian police carted away laptops and documents that had the processed 2017 budget which was earlier scheduled to be laid on Tuesday. This happened when the police raided his the Asokoro residence on Thursday last week. Apart from the documents and laptops, the police also recovered 4,000 Saudi riyals, $19,000 and 18 million Naira in cash.

“I want to apologise to my colleagues that we could not keep to the timetable you gave us to lay the budget yesterday (Tuesday) and to get it passed (Wednesday). I think it is not our own fault, it is the fault of the police because the police interfered with the whole of the budget process and I hope Nigerians will not turn out to blackmail the National Assembly because the process was truncated by the police,” Goje said while briefing the senate.

With this news, it would be a miracle if the 2017 budget is passed before May 5^th, 2017. It would be recalled that the proposed budget, estimated at 7.29 trillion Naira, was initially scheduled to be passed before the end of March 2017. But lawmakers said they were still working out the details after finding some complexities in the figures of some ministries, department and agencies. As a result of this, they gave a deadline of May 5^th for the passage. But Senator Goje also hinted in late March that this date of May 5^th might not be realistic and suggested that an extension might be required if the budget was not passed by the new deadline. He further added that MDAs would get legal backing to continue spending after the 2016 budget expires on May 5.

This is happening at a time that Nigerians are anxiously waiting for the implementation of the 2017 budget to see whether it can improve their lives. Nigerians are complaining of hunger, businesses are closing down leading to severe unemployment; salaries of staff are not being paid. Instead of focusing on the budget that could turn Nigeria’s economy around and pass it early enough the Senate was busy handing out ultimatums to President Buhari to sack Mustapha Magu, the chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and issuing orders to Colonel Hamid Ali to wear Nigeria Customs Service uniform.

While addressing the National Assembly during the presentation of the 2017 budget, President Buhari disclosed that the sum of 100 billion Naira has been provided in the Special Intervention Programme as seed money into the 1 trillion Naira Family Homes Fund that will underpin a new social housing programme. This is expected to stimulate construction activity throughout the country. This programme has been stalled by the non-passage of the 2017 budget by the senate. The sum of 500 billion Naira carried over from the 2016 budget which is for Special Intervention Programme consisting of the Home-grown School Feeding Programme; Government Economic Empowerment programme; N-Power Job Creation Programme to provide loans for traders and artisans; Conditional Cash Transfers to the poorest families and the new Family Homes Fund (social housing scheme) have also been held.

The Nigerian Senate is stalling all these programmes, which are aimed at reducing the suffering of Nigerians, as it continues to extend the passage of the 2017 budget.