2016 budget: No rift between Executive, Legislature ---Minister
(Nigeria) The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji
Lai Mohammed, has said there was no disagreement whatsoever between the
Executive and the Legislature on the 2016 Budget, which has been passed by the
National Assembly.
''There is absolutely no rift, no issue of budget being sent
back. Things are just taking their due course,'' the Minister said in Abuja on
Thursday when he visited the corporate headquarters of the Leadership
newspaper, as part of his continuous engagement with stakeholders in the media
industry.
He said it was not true that the President has refused to
sign the Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly, adding: ''It takes
a few days (after the passage) for the National Assembly to clean up the
document in readiness for the President's assent.''
Speaking further on the budget, Alhaji Mohammed said when it
is eventually passed into law, it will lift millions of Nigerians out of
poverty, thanks to the six focal areas of social intervention contained
therein.
“The first is the employment of 500,000 unemployed
university graduates who we are going to train as teachers. Two, we are also
employing 370,000 unemployed non-graduates, people with National Diploma and
Technical Certificate. The third tranche is the social intervention targeted at
1 million people made up of market women, traders and artisans to be trained
and given loans through their cooperatives.
“The fourth one is the home-grown One-Meal-A-Day Programme.
Here we are targeting several millions of pupils in primary schools all over
Nigeria. The exponential effect of this one meal a day is huge. Even if we are
targeting five million pupils and we are giving each of them one egg a day, you
are talking about five million eggs that will be provided by our poultry
farmers. This will also help to increase the demand for maize and then you are
going to employ people all around,” he said.
The minister further disclosed that the Federal Government
will also commence the Conditional Cash Transfer to the most vulnerable
Nigerians, in collaboration with some development partners, to bring succour to
such people.
He said that a special bursary scheme will also come on
stream to grant scholarships to students of Science, Technology, Engineering
and Mathematics in a deliberate effort to support the students financially
while also bolstering the nation’s drive for industrialization.
Alhaji Mohammed also disclosed that the sum of N350 billion
will soon be injected into the economy to enable contractors to resume work on
abandoned infrastructural projects, with
timeline and target on project delivery and job creation.
He thanked Nigerians for their patience and the
understanding of the challenges facing the government, saying rather than give
excuses, the government was working round the clock to alleviate the pains of
Nigerians.
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