There are indications that the 2017 budget may not be passed soon following a disclosure made by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Danjuma Goje, that the budget documents were part of the items seized by the police during a raid in his residence recently.
“We were holding a meeting on the budget on Thursday (when his house was raided). So, from Thursday ((last week) till now, we have not been able to meet because some of the papers are not around. Many of us are traumatised. My house as a politician is a beehive of activities; people are coming from all over the country to sympathise with me. I have no time to sit.
“From today, we are trying to start sitting again as Appropriation Committee to see what we can do with the budget. I want to apologise to my colleagues that we could not keep to the timetable you gave us to lay the budget yesterday (Tuesday) and to get it passed today (Wednesday). And I think it is not our own fault; it is the fault of the police because they interfered with the whole of the budget process and I hope Nigerians will not turn out to blackmail the National Assembly because the process was truncated by the police.”