‘Why Lagos Assembly Returned Supplementary Budget’

Lagos lawmakers on Thursday resolved to return the N46 billion supplementary budget it received on Tuesday for clarification.

The lawmakers said they observed errors in the figures sent to the House during the second reading of the Bill.

They said the House unanimously agreed that the proposals should be returned to the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget.

They claimed that there was N11billion discrepancy in the budget analysis during debate and wondered what the actual figure should be.

Mr Solomon Olamilekan, Ad-hoc Committee Chairman on Finance, said the amount requested and sources of financing the requests were not clear.

“The government shows its capacity to raise N20 billion out of the N46 billion requested.

The budget analysis only shows that N10 billion will be sourced from the Lagos Internal Revenue Service and another N10 billion from the federal allocation which has performed by 124 percent so far.

“ This leaves a gap of N26 billion that will have to be borrowed.

“ However, in the finance column, N15 billion was stated instead of N26 billion. This cannot be a typographical error,” he said.

Apart from the discrepancy, some of the lawmakers picked holes in the specific demands of the supplementary budget.

Mr Mudasiru Obasa (Agege 1) said the purpose was not explicit and therefore “not reasonable enough.’’

He also argued that security had been voted for in the 2010 budget in addition to the monthly security vote.

In a related development, the House has given the ad-hoc committee on budget performance of the state from January 2009 to March two weeks to submit its report.