Senators
form the All Progressives Congress today, picked holes with the estimates of
the 2014 Budget and demanded the resignation of Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for the wrong
estimates in the budget.
Presenting the opposition views, Senate Minority Leader, Gorge Akume, called
for cancellation of the debate and immediate reworking of the estimates. He
maintained that necessary documents for meaningful contributions to the debate,
was not presented to the guide senators in the debate. He faulted the allocation 700 million naira for
the entertainment of VIPs and 300million naira for State House Clinic.
For
his part, Senator Ahmed Lawan, decried
the marginalisation of the North-east in the proposal and questioned the N163bn
allocated to the south-south Amnesty programme, noting that the N2bn allocated
as the intervention funds for victims of the Boko Haram insurgency is
unacceptable.
Senator
Lawan further called for the
resignation of the Minister of Finance, Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, saying the country has not been able to achieve anything in
her tenure.
But
Senate Spokesman, Enyinnanya Abaribe,
urged the Senate to adopt the pattern of Rivers state assembly in passing the 2014
budget without delay.
The 2014 budget
proposal also predicated on bench mark oil price of $77.5per barrel, projected
oil production of over 2.3million barrels per day, average exchange rate of
N160 per US$1 same as 2013 and the projection of GDP growth Rate of 6.75%, up
from 6.5% 2013
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