President Muhammadu Buhari
President Muhammadu Buhari has removed about 184 top budget officials from the Nigerian budget duties and redeployed them to establishments that have little or nothing to do with budget over their roles in padding the 2016 budget.
The president’s move is in pursuance to his earlier stance to deal decisively with all those involved in the padding of the 2016 national budget which caused much embarrassment to the federal government. Speaking about the shakeup, a top official in the budget office confirmed to Vanguard that 22 top officers from the budget office of the federation were affected in the mass deployment. The rest were moved away from budget-related duties in other ministries, departments and agencies.
Following the mass redeployment, 14 other directors said to have been tested have been redeployed to the same office with immediate effect to replace the removed officers. The directive to redeploy the tainted officers to other duties reportedly came from the office of the head of service of the federation. All the affected officers, according to the directive, were to report in their new locations on or before the close of work on March 1o.
Recall that back in February, President Buhari complained the unauthorized alterations of the 2016 budget had completely changed the document from the one he presented to the National Assembly. He vowed that all those involved in the padding of the budget would face the most severe punishment. He also ordered for investigation into allegations of fraudulent alterations in the document with strict orders that all cases of discrepancies, errors and ambiguities be resolved promptly.
Source: www.naij.com
