According to Abayomi who has been
fighting this oddity since 2002 and has
a case in court about it, there is
nothing like constituency project since
the National Assembly has NO power,
whatever, to insert any project in a
budget, the Nation reports.
Isn’t it the saying that there is honour
even amongst thieves? When was it
Nigerians saw anything like this
hurricane convulsing the House of
Representatives? Apparently, even
with all the emphasis on CHANGE
during the elections, our legislators
never believed that a new Sheriff had
hit town.
How would they, with Bukola Saraki
riding roughshod, not only over the
APC but even insulting the president
in the process?
Nor had Dogara a whiff of it either,
but he was smarter, and a lot more
respectful. So he soft-pedaled and
aligned with the party. But
collectively, they believed that what
Ndume called their internal
mechanism – read chop and clean
mouth – would still be the order of
the day.
So off they went, padding and
padding, believing they could make
the Buhari budget in their own image
and, like in President Jonathan’s days,
every machete was out, cutting slices
of a budget that they knew was going
to be funded through massive external
borrowing. But who cares?
If you believe the Dogara side of this
roforofo fight, you will have the
following: “For reasons that were not
noble and not in the Public Interest,
Hon Abdulmumin had initially
inflated the Budget by adding about
N250b more to the total figure as
submitted by Mr President. This, the
NASS leadership out rightly rejected
as a form of financial recklessness
and inability to appreciate the
dwindling resources available to
government necessitating that we act
prudently.”
I can hear Nigerians asking these con
artists when exactly they started
being, not only so people -friendly,
but caring and responsible. If they
were half as considerate in an
economy where so many are hurting,
they would long have stopped being
amongst the highest paid legislators in
the world as I would show below.
Confident that they would successfully
pad the Buhari budget, change or no
change, since this has been a long
running practice in the National
Assembly, dating back to the Obasanjo
era when that President hauled some
of them before the courts,
Abdulmumin alleged that the House
leadership “fraudulently shortchanged
the House by taking away N40 billion
out of the N100 billion allocated for
constituency projects and distributing
same to themselves even without the
approval of the House”.
It did not stop there as, according to
Jibrin, “10 standing committees of the
House inserted over 2000 projects
worth N284 Billion”, into a budget
President Buhari was agonising over
its funding. Rationalising this public
odium, however, hear how the
Chairman, House Information
Committee, Abdulrazak Namdas
insulted Nigerians.
According to him “given the workings
of the budget process, the House
cannot be accused of padding because
there is nothing like that.’ In his
puerile explanation, this same man,
who Tunji Abayomi, a doctorate
degree holder in Law recently took
through a learning process on budget
making on Channels TV, said the
following: “Section 4 empowers the
National Assembly to make laws for
the good governance of the federation
while Section 59 confers on the
Legislature final say on the budget.
“Section 80 (4) on the other hand,
which confers on the legislature
absolute power of control over public
funds, states: “No money shall be
withdrawn from the Consolidated
Revenue Fund or any other public
fund of the Federation, except in the
manner prescribed by the National
Assembly”.
And the cheek of it: “The word
manner confers absolute legislative
discretion. “When, therefore, the
National Assembly appropriates funds
in the budget, it can never under any
circumstances or guise be deemed or
regarded as tinkering or padding’.
What impudence, what banality, both
anchored on a stultifying ignorance!
If this fellow was not such a poor
student, he should not have forgotten
the most elementary of what Dr
Abayomi taught him: simply, that
Budget making is an EXECUTIVE
function and that it is the ONLY
subject about which the Nigerian
constitution specifically specifies the
modus. According to Abayomi who
has been fighting this oddity since
2002 and has a case in court about it,
there is nothing like constituency
project since the National Assembly
has NO power, whatever, to insert
any project in a budget.
Therefore, the only way legislators
can help constituencies is by lobbying
the Executive branch to have projects
inserted in the budget. To do
otherwise, I hope they now know, is
to sleep walk to
posted by: TAGED
