{"id":47067,"date":"2016-03-01T21:59:11","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T20:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=47067"},"modified":"2016-03-01T21:59:11","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T20:59:11","slug":"buhari-budget-paddlers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/articles-opinions\/buhari-budget-paddlers\/","title":{"rendered":"Between Buhari and Budget \u2018Paddlers\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">There are three of groups of people who padded President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s 2016 Budget. The budget he christened \u2018budget of change\u2019. The first of group is mainly\u00a0\u00a0made up of few civil servants who are used to and live on being \u2018budget rats\u2019 and have\u00a0\u00a0been milking the nation for only God knows how long.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">The second group is opposition politicians who are bent on seeing the APC government fail and also ridicule Buhari\u2019s honest attempt to bring something new to Nigerians. The third group is the most dangerous- they are insiders, they are APC members who want to use the passage of the budget as a \u2018political commodity\u2019 and a bargaining tool to achieve some political and personal goals.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">President Buhari said that he has never heard the word \u2018budget padding\u2019 until now. Most Nigerians, likewise have never. And this is because the perpetrators of the act had been milking the nation via that way and succeeding. In fact, the main reason this dastardly act came to the open is because the third group who wanted to exploit the passage of the budget as a bargaining tool, have become very desperate and was looking for an easy way to achieve their goals.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">Since the President is hearing budgeting padding for the first time, he should\u00a0employ his presidential powers to deal with the \u2018paddlers\u2019. For the civil servant, it will be very easy to deal with them; those found to have put a single \u2018foreign\u2019 digit in the budget should face the appropriate punishment as stipulated in the civil service rules. For the opposition who wants to prove to Nigerians at all cost that APC\u2019s advocated change is not feasible, the president should not give them any chance to have their way- thus, the provisions in the budget should be implemented to the last word. For the insiders- APC members, dealing with them is the simplest. The President should maintain his stand on non interference in matters such as party and court cases neither should he give in to attempts to get something from the executive in return for parliamentary approval of\u00a0\u00a0executive proposals. He should also maintain his well-cherished stand of operating a government based of system thinking.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">All said and done, the arduous task before the president is to put in place a mechanism to avoid future occurrence and save the nation embarrassment.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">What the Mr. President needs to do are: whenever a budget is compiled\u00a0\u00a0and have passed through the rigorous checks of the\u00a0\u00a0Ministry of Budget and Planning and the budget\u00a0\u00a0office,\u00a0\u00a0there should also be\u00a0\u00a0Presidential special aides\/team whose role will be to scrutinize the entire provisions of the budget for the president. Such team can also be doing same on other documents for the president. Secondly, before the president presents the budget to the National Assembly, he should make the national document accessible to all Nigerians- if anything new is inserted, the president and Nigerians will easily know.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">Above all, Nigerians expect Mr. President to ensure paddlers of his first budget-the budget of change, \u00a0should not go unpunished.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><i>\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><i>Zayyad I. Muhammad writes from Jimeta, Adamawa State, <a href=\"mailto:zaymohd@yahoo.com\" target=\"_blank\">zaymohd@yahoo.com<\/a>, 08036070980. He blogs at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.zayyaddp.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.zayyaddp.blogspot.com<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are three of groups of people who padded President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s 2016 Budget. The budget he christened \u2018budget of change\u2019. The first of group is mainly\u00a0\u00a0made up of few&hellip;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-opinions"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Between Buhari and Budget \u2018Paddlers\u2019 - Pointblank News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/articles-opinions\/buhari-budget-paddlers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Between Buhari and Budget \u2018Paddlers\u2019 - Pointblank News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are three of groups of people who padded President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s 2016 Budget. 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