The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said that neither the executive nor herself is to be blamed for the present budget impasse in the country.
Okonjo-Iweala said this while speaking with the South Africa Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Cape Town on Thursday that “the executive arm of government is not responsible for the budget impasse.”
She said, “I want to be categorical that the executive is not responsible for the budget impasse and that I, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, have definitely not done anything nor am I responsible for the present situation.
“I am very surprised and actually shocked to hear that the National Assembly has put the blame on the executive for the situation.
“Our honourable members of the National Assembly know that when the budget came back to the executive, so many things had been tampered with or altered.
“Money had been shifted from on-going projects and put into other part of the budget, money had also been shifted from personnel cost and put into other part of the budget.
“When we made this known to them, the National Assembly also presented other aspects of the personnel cost which we reconciled and said that they would deal with the other aspects of the funds movement which was making the budget implementation difficult later.”
She said that leaders of the National Assembly agreed with President Goodluck Jonathan that he should sign the budget and send the corrections to the assembly to effect the necessary amendments.
“The National Assembly agreed that Mr President should sign the budget and send the corrections back to the National Assembly so that it could reverse the areas of disagreement.
“What the executive has done is to effect the correction as agreed in the identified area in the budget as agreed between the leaders of the national assembly and Mr President. That is what the ministry did,” she said in the interview held on the sidelines of her book launch in Cape Town.