As the President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has signed into law the N2.17 trillion 2023 supplementary budget, economists have called for caution in the way the government spend money on frivolous things.
Speaking in an interview, Professor Jonathan Aremu, an economic analyst, said as much as possible the government should make sure that the country is not consuming the future by borrowing too much.
According to him, “It is only things that are necessary for economic growth that we should spend money on, otherwise it should be done away with, people are suffering because of the state of the economy.
“This is not the time to pump too much money into economy otherwise, it is will be counterproductive because the more naira you pump into the economy, the more pressure you put of the foreign exchange.”
He also cautioned the National Assembly to play their role by always critically looking into bills that are sent to them by the executive.
On his part, Lead Director, Centre for Social Justice ( CSJ), Mr. Eze Onyekpere, said the National Assembly simply rubber stamped the supplementary bill, and action he said shows they do not fully understand their constitutional powers of appropriation which involves proper scrutiny of executive proposals before they are passed.
“For instance, a Supplementary Appropriation is supposed to be presented by the Executive if in the original appropriation there is need for more money to meet what had earlier been appropriated,” he said.
“But in this case, new items were introduces, some of them illegal.
The vote for the office of the first lady is illegal vote, that office is not recognised by the constitution or any law. Again, how do you explain the situation where the supplementary budget is higher that the original amount appropriated for an item, for instance, in the original appropriation for cars in the villa, we have a little above one billion Naira, but in the supplementary budget you are asking for N5.8 billion.”
He said the National Assembly has failed in its duties.