Senate to re-consider Buhari’s request

The Senate will look into President Buharis request seeking approval to borrow $30b for infrastructural development, this week, reports say.

Reports say this might be as a result of the meetings which Buhari had with the Senate President, Bukola Saraki.

The Senate had earlier rejected the request, saying there were no documents supporting the request as referenced in the letter sent by the President.

According to Punch, the Majority Leader of the Senate, Senator Ali Ndume, said “We will deal with the issues this week by God’s grace.”

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Sabi Abdullahi, who spoke on the issue, added that “As it is, we don’t even have any information that will enable us to be diligent.

“We passed the budget and the borrowing plan in the budget was clear, N3.2tn made up of N900bn from domestic sources and the balance from external lenders. But the question is: with the new one that was sent, what have they done with respect to the provisions of the 2016 budget? It is not clear. How are they going to do it?

“Those are the things we presume are in the document that Mr. President said was ‘attached’, which, unfortunately, his officials were careless about and they showed that they are truly incompetent. This is the first time we are seeing information on the budget sent to us without those details. It came as a letter. We saw the letter and it was read.

“Do we have any alternative? No, we don’t. I have seen situations where people have tried as much as possible to create and perpetuate the frosty relationship between the two arms of government. It is unfortunate.”

You will recall that Senator Ali Ndume said he regretted not marketing the proposal for the loan, shortly after the Senate threw it out.