President Buhari has rated Senate President, Bukola Saraki, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, low on patrotism for the delay in passing the 2019 budget. The President presented the budget to a join session of the National Assembly in December 2018 and the Lawmakers passed the budget into law in April, five months after.

Apparently displeased the delay in passing the Budget every year, President Buhari in a
taped interview broadcast on Nigerian Television Authority on Monday night, said he expresed his displeasure to Saraki and Dogara while assenting the budget on Monday May 27th.

“I think a culture was developed in the National Assembly that they should dictate the terms, which was wrong. It is the executive that dictates the terms and takes it before the legislature. It (the legislature) will examine it and agree or disagree with it.

But when they go around posing that they are the government and not the executive, then that’s the problem. I felt it and I spoke personally to the Senate President, Saraki, and the leader of the House, Dogara. They could not deny it.

I asked them how they felt to hold the country at ransom for seven months without passing a budget. Unfortunately, they were not hurting me; they were hurting the country. So, really, in terms of patriotism, I think I rated them very low indeed.

But to hold a budget for seven months cannot be justified if you really bother about the country,” he said