The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said<\/p>\n
that there is no rift between the executive and legislative arm of
\ngovernment over the passage of the 2016 budget.<\/p>\n
Mohammed said this on Thursday when he paid a visit to the Corporate
\nHeadquarters of the Leadership Newspapers in Abuja.
\n\u201cOn the passage of the budget, I want to clear the misconception. There is
\nabsolutely no rift between the executive arm of government and legislative
\narm of government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not true that the president has refused to assent to the budget.
\nThe fact remains that it (budget) is not even before him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe practice really is that when the budget is approved like that, there
\nis what we call headline figure that is approved, then, it will take a few
\ndays for the National Assembly to throw up the details.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
The minister said it was the original copy of budget that would be taken
\nto the president after the necessary correction.<\/p>\n
He also said that there was no setback in the budget, adding that the
\nMinistry of Budget and National Planning was working closely with the
\nNational Assembly to ensure hitch-free passage of the budget.<\/p>\n
The minister said that the signing of the budget by President Muhammadu
\nBuhari would reflate the economy and uplift millions of Nigerians out of
\nabject poverty. He said that the budget would focus on infrastructure
\ndevelopment which would in turn create jobs for unemployed Nigerians and
\nwealth for workers in the construction industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a budget of social inclusion. It is a budget that everybody is
\nincluded\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
Mohammed said that there was N500 billion provision for social
\nintervention programmes targeted at employing 500,000 graduates, to be
\ntrained as teachers and deployed to primary schools.<\/p>\n
He said the programmes also aimed at empowering 370,000 non-graduates such
\nas artisans and technicians.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt targets at training one million people such as farmers, market women,
\ntraders and entrepreneurs as well as giving them loan to start off.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt aims at giving one meal to 4.5 million pupils from class 1 to 3 per
\nday. It is also aimed at giving N5,000 to vulnerable Nigerians such as
\nwidows, aged people and disabled people in the rural areas.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
The minister said the social intervention programmes also targeted at
\nproviding bursary and scholarship for students studying science,
\ntechnology and engineering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said that there is no rift between the executive and legislative arm of government over the passage of the 2016…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n