President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday postponed the emergency meeting of the Federal Executive Council which he summoned to consider the 2016 Budget.
All ministers had arrived the Presidential Villa, Abuja ahead of the 10am scheduled commencement time of the meeting before they were informed by members of staff of the Protocol Unit that the meeting had been called off.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, later told State House correspondents that the meeting was postponed to allow them reflect some of the corrections made on the 2016 Budget proposal during a meeting of the National Economic Council held on Thursday.
He said ministers were expected to do some “rejigging of figures” and return for the meeting on Monday afternoon.
Mohammed said, “The meeting was not cancelled. It was postponed till Monday afternoon.
“The reason is that you know there was a meeting of the National Economic Council yesterday (Thursday).
” At that meeting, many of the key cabinet members made presentations. There were some fallouts from those presentations that will necessitate going back to the original document that should have been discussed today.
“So, we were given time between now and Monday to go and rejig our figures because when the NEC met, certain issues were thrown up that if they were not resolved, would distort the entire budget proposal. So we will all go back, each ministry will do its rejiging.”
Buhari is expected to present the budget to a joint session of the National Assembly on Tuesday.
