Date: 2016-12-15

President Muhammadu Buhari places the 2017 budget proposal on the table after he presented it before a joint session of the National Assembly in Abuja yesterday Senate President, Bukola Saraki yesterday told President Muhammadu Buhari that there is hardship in the country and that Nigerians are suffering.

Speaking during the presentation of the 2017 budget by President Buhari, Saraki said Nigerians are lamenting the hardship in the country.

"Mr. President, the feedback we get from visits to our various constituencies is that there is hardship in the land. We can see it and we can feel it. This situation therefore commands all of us as government to a greater sense of urgency. We cannot work magic, but we must continue to work the clock.

"Our people must see that the singular pre-occupation of government is the search for solution to the current economic hardship; and the commitment to ease their burden. They don't want to know what political parties we belong, what language we speak or how we worship God. They have trusted their fates into our hands, and they need us now more than ever, to justify the trust that they have reposed on us," he said.

Also speaking while delivering the votes of thanks after the budget presentation, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, said Buhari should include abandoned and white elephant projects in the list of anomalies he must kill.

He said "join me in urging Mr President to add distorted budget cycle and abandoned capital projects /white elephant projects, to the list of things, in addition to corruption, that he must kill."

Dogara also said that the annual budget process was frustrating because the set out goals are not usually achieved.