Writing by Bashir Mayere; Editing by Basirat Memudu
The senate has urged the economic team on the need to define a pathway towards adopting a performance-priority-based budgeting system rather than envelop system of budgeting.
The chairman senate committee on finance, senator Muhammad Sani Musa made the appeal in his remarks during an interactive engagements with the economic team headed by the Minister of Finance, Mr Wale Edun.
Senator Sani Musa said Budget is projections and if the revenue target is not met, there is no way the implementation will go vis-a-vis with what the expectations of the output will be.
He added that the current system seems not efficient enough where overhead and recurrent receive 100 percent releases while the capital components of the budget receive zero release is not acceptable, saying this is a big challenge that need to be looked into.
“Where we see so many government officials being able to travel, we see overheads, recurrent being fully funded, while capital meant for Nigerians is at zero allocations, that is unacceptable to the committee. Nigeria cannot afford incremental adjustments when structural reform is required.”
However the committee urged the Federal Government to revert back to old payment system for contractors as against the current centralized system which made it to be indebted to many contractors on projects executed in 2024 and 2025 inclusive.
In their separate remarks, all the members of the committee supported the Chairman by advising the economic team to sit up for better budget planning and implementation as well as prompt payments of contractors .
Similarly in their responses, the economic team assured the committee and by extension, Nigerians that the outlook for 2026 is very positive for the N58.472trillion proposed budget in terms of implementation.
The minister of finance, Wale Edun explained to the committee that N152trillion budget profile the country currently has, was not accumulated by borrowings alone.
He said : “Currently, government debt in Naira terms, is 152 trillion Naira. About 30 trillion Naira came from Ways and Means inherited by this government and N9trillion incurred from exchange rate adjustment.
“So virtually half of that debt is made up of adjustments. It is not additional borrowing. Additional borrowing since 2023 is in the 20 trillion range.”
Earlier at the beginning of the session with the economic team, the committee resolved to write President Bola Tinubu to sack the Registrar – General of Corporate Affairs Commission, for his persistent refusal to appear before the committee.
These resolutions were taken by the committee during interactive session with the economic team of the Federal Government led by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of Economy, Mr Wale Edun which also had in attendance, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Atiku Bagudu, the Accountant General of the Federation , Dr Shamseldeen Babatunde Ogunjimi and the Chairman, Nigeria Revenue Service ( NRC ) Zach Adedeji.