Nigeria's Buhari finally signs delayed 2018 budget

21 Jun, 2018

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday signed the 2018 budget into law, more than six months after it was first presented to parliament.
Buhari approved the 9.1-trillion-naira ($25 billion, 22-billion-euro) spending plan, which is designed to boost economic growth after the country's worst recession in over two decades. He wrote on Twitter that he had signed it "in order not to further slowdown the pace of recovery of our economy, which has doubtlessly been affected by the delay in passing the budget".
But he said he was "concerned" about some of the changes the National Assembly made to the proposals he first presented back in November last year.
"It is my intention to seek to remedy some of the most critical of these issues through a supplementary and/or amendment budget which I hope the National Assembly will be able to expeditiously consider," he added.
Delays in passing government budgets have become a feature in Nigeria but experts said it had already done damage. "The economy has been operating rather in a rudderless manner," said economist Eze Onyekpere, from the Centre for Social Justice in Abuja.

Read Comments