By Adetutu Folasade-Koyi, Kemi Yesufu and Fred Itua, Abuja

President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, sent back ‘grey areas’ in the N6.06 trillion 2016 budget to the National Assembly.

Federal lawmakers confirmed receipt of “a list of grey areas” from the president in the 2016 budget after yesterday’s plenary.

Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Abdulrazak Namdas confirmed they received a list of the contentious issues to be corrected.

He further disclosed that the leadership of the Senate and House had met over the letter containing the ‘grey areas in the budget’ to ensure and hasten  concurrence.

“Speaker Yakubu Dogara met with the president as mandated by the House. I can confirm that we are in possession of the list of the grey areas,” he said.

However, Namdas was not forthcoming on to the ‘grey areas’ as listed by the president.

The House spokesman also didn’t say if the N60 billion Calabar-Lagos rail project was listed in the letter.

He also refused to explain why Dogara jettisoned the tradition of reading executive communications on the floor of the House by not reading the latest letter from the president.

Across the aisle, senators were locked in a closed-door session where the 2016 budget was extensively debated.

Daily Sun gathered that some senators demanded the resignation of Appropriations Committee Chairman, Senator Danjuma Goje.

Rising from the session, Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who presided, simply reported progress and said “the Senate, in a closed session, deliberated on issues relating to the 2016 Appropriation Bill and the way forward for the quick resolutions of all the matters related to the early implementation of the budget in the best interest of our nation.”

Thereafter, Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, told newsmen the meeting did not discuss Goje’s resignation as the matter never even came up for discussion.

“Nobody should expect me, on my honour, to disclose details of what we discussed in closed session. It is not true that we asked the chairman of the senate committee, senator Danjuma Goje to resign.

“That was not what we discussed. Goje was appointed and he could only be removed by a vote of no confidence. We can only ask the elected officers of the Senate to resign ; not chairmen of committees. For a chairman that was appointed, we can decide to appoint another one, we can swap chairmen, we change their responsibilities.”

On the Senate relationship with the president regarding the budget crisis, Ndume said: “We have seen the president already on the budget, in fact, the meeting with the president by the Senate leadership is not a big deal. It is not true that the budget has been sent back to the National Assembly.

“I am also not aware that there is any communication from the president on the issue. What I know is that areas of concern to the Presidency are now with us here. We are talking with the Presidency to resolve all the issues.”

On March 23, the National Assembly passed the budget and later transmitted it to Buhari for assent with the omission of certain projects and addition of others not proposed by the Executive.

One of such projects was the Lagos-Calabar rail project counted as a critical infrastructure focus of the administration.

It was not captured in the original budget but was brought as a supplementary proposal of the Transport Ministry by its Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, and was approved, Chairman Senate Committee on Land Transport, Gbenga Ashafa said.

However, the appropriations committees of both chambers removed the project from the final draft. They premised their action on the fact that Amaechi lacked the powers to make budgetary proposal.

Last week, while the Senate said Buhari should sign the budget and, later, send a supplementary proposal to capture the Lagos-Calabar rail project, the House said it had resolved to receive the budget to capture the project before assent.