The Senate has appealed to President Bola Tinubu to sanction invited heads of government Ministries, Department and Agency, MDAs, who failed to appear for deliberations on 2024-2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, FSP.
The President of Senate, Sen. Godswill Akpabio said this when he declared opened the 2024-2026 MTEF/FSP interactive session in Abuja on Thursday.
The session was organised by Senate Joint Committee on Finance, Appropriation, National Planning and Local and Foreign Debt.
Mr Akpabio said any invited serious minded head of any MDA interested in success of President Bola Tinubu ought to be present at the interaction.
”If you do not plan on how to succeed, then you have planned to fail, I therefore remind our committee that any serious appointee or any head of any agency that is interested in the success of President Bola Tinubu’s administration ought to be here.
“The Chairman of the lead committee ( Finance), should give me the list of all the Heads of Agencies that you invited who have failed to show up in this session, this is the beginning of their failure in their various offices.
“Any head of agency that sends representation here is not a serious person and therefore, the President must take a second look at such a person’ s appointment.
”It is not a threat but the truth. I shelved even my appointment to appear in Owerri today for the final rally of my party and all other schedules that I have to make sure that I appear so that we can strategise on how we can succeed,” he said.
Mr Akpabio said the interactive session was a landmark, as it was the first in the administration of Tinubu.
He said the timing and urgency of the MTEF and FSP proceedings was in pursuant of the goal of keeping to the re-established January- December budget cycle.
He said the 2024-2026 MTEF/FSP was being considered at a time that events at the global scene and locally, were putting massive negative financial and socio- economic pressure on Nigeria from most development indices.
“While we acknowledge that majority of our people are going through very difficult times in their daily lives at present, we are very hopeful that in the medium term and in the long run, Nigerian economy is bound to rebound for reliefs to majority of our people,” he said.
He called for a frank and honest discussions of all the parameters and indices contained in the 2024-2026 MTEF/FSP.
”We must not shy away from confronting the economic challenges facing the nation and the 2024- 2026 MTEF/FSP should be a platform to guide our subsequent actions.
“He said given the progress made in finance with reforms of the nation’s financial system through passage of four Finance Acts (2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022), Nigeria must continue to bring its financial legislation up to speed for increased revenue,” he said.
NAN
