* Buhari signing the budget.

President Muhammadu Buhari, Friday finally assented to the 2016 Budget after several weeks of ding-dong with the National Assembly.

 Hints that the Budget might be passed this week was given by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo Monday at Trenchard Hall, University of Ibadan durng the presentation of the book 'Nigeria: The Challenges of Growth and Development, an In-Depth Analysis by Experts.

 According to Vice-President Osinbajo,  the budget is not only ambitious in size but also more in its broad range of fiscal policies. Our strategic implementation plan proposes 33 action points.

 "The action points cut across six political ties of security, governance, economic diversification, power, road and rail, oil and gas, ease of investments and social investment," he said.

 Osinbajo added  that for the first time in three years, the nation would have 30 per cent of the budget going for capital expenditure, a percentage that was three times higher than the last budget.

 He said that the capital expenditure would take care of several aspects of infrastructure, particularly rail, road and power.

 According to him, the rail link between Lagos and Kano as well as the one between Lagos and Calabar will be captured.

 He said that government had budgeted that by July, 65,000 youths would be trained in software and hardware, adding that government’s aim was to build a reservoir of technologists.

 Osinbajo also listed the training of 370,000 Nigerians in various vocations, conditional cash transfer to the poor and loan facilities for market women as part of the programmes to be expected.The president’s assent to the budget is coming weeks after horse-trading between the presidency and the national assembly. In April,the national assembly transmitted details of the budget to the president after it had passed the bill on March 23. But the president returned the document to the national assembly on the grounds that there were “grey areas” in it that needed to be sorted out.

 The budget, after several weeks of buck-passing between the presidency and the National Assembly  was transmitted to the president on Thursday.

  The budget proposal of N6.07 trillion was  presented to a joint session of the National Assembly by President Buhari in December, 2015. A total of N351bn was for statutory transfers, N2.8trn for recurrent expenditure and N1. 8trn for capital expenditure.

 The legislature, based on the recommendation of its committees on appropriation, adopted $38 per barrel crude oil benchmark for the budget, as proposed by the Federal Government. It also adopted a foreign exchange rate of N197 per dollar as proposed by the government. It, however, reduced the total budget sum from N6.07trn to N6.06trn: N351bn for statutory transfers, N1.4trn for debt service, N2.6trn for recurrent expenditure, and N1.5trn as capital expenditure.