The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly voted against the report of its committee on Finance, on the budget of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) for the 2016 fiscal year.
DAILY POST recalls that the Senate had at its sitting of Thursday, 21st July 2016 considered the request of President Muhammadu Buhari on the 2016 Budget of the FIRS and referred same to the committee on Finance for further legislative action.
However, when the committee’s report was read on the floor by the Chairman, Senator John Enoh, the Senate President and other Senators discovered loopholes in the said report.
The committee through its report, had recommended that a total expenditure of N143, 722, 430, 526 (One Hundred and Forty-Three Billion, Seven Hundred and Twenty-Two Million, Four Hundred and Thirty Thousand, Five Hundred and Twenty-Six naira) be approved for FIRS in 2016.
While reacting, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki queried the report. According to him, “the committee met in July, how comes it is recommending exactly what the agency projected at the beginning of the year 2016”.
Saraki was also baffled that the committee could recommend all the figures the FIRS proposed, without making any adjustment.
On his part, Senator Albert Bassey (Akwa Ibom North East) observed that the personnel overhead of the FIRS budget increased drastically to N25bn from 2015 to 2016; whereas, the agency is just undertaking a recruitment exercise for more personnel.
Senator Mohammed Hassan (Yobe South) in his reaction said, “the description of some of the items on the budget are fake”, stressing that the Senate needed full details of the items captured in the budget.
The deputy Majority Leader, Bala Ibn Na’allah and the Senate Minority Whip, Philip Aduda were of the opinion that the report be withdrawn as various issues needed to be worked upon.
They, however, bemoaned the way agencies would be presenting budgets for the fiscal year at the a time the year was already getting to an end.
“It is not helping the Senate in any way”, they said while flipping the John Enoh report into the trash, describing it as a “copy and paste budget”.
Saraki while ruling on the matter, said there was a need to always do a thorough job and ascertain the figures, especially when it comes to area of revenue generation.
He also observed that some capital projects always reoccur in agencies’ budgets every year.
Having voted against the report, the Senate President, therefore, asked the committee on Finance to go back and tidy up issues raised, and report back within one week.
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