FG explains shifting of emergency FEC meeting

THE Federal Government said the emergency Federal Executive Council (FEC) meting summoned for Friday to discuss issues relating to the 2016 Appropriation Bill was shifted for Monday to enable ministers fine tune their presentations. It has therefore, denied media reports that the council was cancelled.

Information and Culture Minister, Lai Mohammed, while giving the clarification in a chat with State House correspondents said the reports that the meeting was cancelled had no iota of truth.

President Muhammadu Buhari will present the bill before a joint National Assembly session on Tuesday.

Mohammed said the decision was to give members of the cabinet enough time to reconcile figures.

“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.

“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 re-jig 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 re-jigging,” said the minister.