The leadership of House of Representatives on Thursday expressed delight over the Supreme Court ruling which ascribed the power of Appropriation to the National Assembly.
Abdulrazak Namdas, Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs who stated this in a chat with Legislative Correspondents, also gave vivid account of the rationale behind the redistribution of funds proposed for key projects such as Second Niger Bridge, Lagos-Ibadan expressway, among others.
Namdas who urged the general public to discountenance the recent altercation between Executive and Legislature, observed that the three arms of government ought to have graduated from this level of altercations on power of appropriation, adding that Sections 4, 59, 80 and 81 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) clearly spelt out the functions of the Legislative arm.
“There is a clear judgment in favour of National Assembly in May 2016 when activist lawyer, Femi Falana went to court to ascertain whether we can increase or decrease budget estimates of the Executive and the court ruled in our favour that the National Assembly is not a mere rubber stamp,” Namdas said.
While giving highlights of the Budget Defence held with Babatunde Fashola, Minister of Power, Lands and Housing, the House spokesman said: “When I told the Minister that they budgeted N17 billion for environment impact assessment (EIA) in the Mambilla, we felt it was unjustified, we felt it was bogus and uncalled for.
“He did not fault what I said. What he said was that it was a mis-description that we should have called his attention.
“As good as they are in their place, since they know everything they shouldn’t have brought something to the National Assembly with mis-descriptions.
“But because we have due diligence in National Assembly, we were able to detect mis-descriptions and that means we have been working, identifying and looking at the budget.
“And again when I even said N20 billion lump sum was just put in the budget without details, the minister did not say I was telling lies.
“He didn’t say he provided details. What he only said was that it was proper planning that N20 billion was put in case of eventualities.
“How can you put N20 billion as miscellaneous in case of anything when a whole Second Niger Bridge was N12 billion and it was yanked off.
“If every ministry must bring N20 billion as miscellaneous, then what is going to remain as the budget of the country.
“We cut down some of these budgetary sums because we must allocate projects to reflect national character because no zone should be cheated or given favourable attention more than the others and that is why we have to do what we are doing. So in my opinion, we didn’t do it for any mischief and we didn’t do it for any personal gains,” the Adamawa lawmaker said.
Speaking on the rationale behind the redistribution of the funds proposed for some of the contentious projects, Namdas (APC-Adamawa) said: “for example, the Second Niger bridge that the Minister complained about that he said we cut the budgetary allocation from N15 billion. That is factually incorrect.
“The correct thing was that it was N12 billion that was allocated for the Second Niger bridge and not a single kobo was released in the 2016. And that same amount was returned back in 2017 budget.
“So we decided to take off N5 billion out of the N12 billion leaving N7 billion for the Second Niger bridge in the 2017 budget. And what did we do with the N5 billion? We took the N5 billion to the South East where the proposal from the Presidency did not cover.
“For example there was the Nsukka-Abakiliki road that was given about N2.1 billion. We had this project in 9th mile that we allocated part of the money to and then one road in the Makurdi axis in the North Central geopolitical zone and then the North East too.
“So it was not for any borehole or any other thing. But whether they like it or not there must be borehole and primary healthcare projects because we are yet to attain the millennium development goals (MDG) goals.”
On the Lagos-Ibadan Express Road, Namdas who frowned at the Minister’s position, he explained that the “Minister had told us that a consortium of banks were handling the road and they are only trying to get budgetary approval.
“In 2016 we approved N40 billion and it was N26 billion that was expended and N14 billion was not released and so if we had given them N30 billion there’s no guarantee that it will be used. So based on this experience on what we’ve been seeing we had to do something so we moved some of these funds because there are other areas that required funding,” the House spokesman explained.
He maintained that the President and all federal lawmakers were elected into office are under obligation to put national interest above any other interest.
“In Nigeria there are towns scattered all over that do not have potable water and they need to drink water, so we made provision for boreholes in such communities in the budget.
“Why is it that when we slashed Executive estimates to satisfy other important issues in the country the Executive will immediately react but when we increase their estimates they keep mum as if nothing happened.
“When they brought the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), we increased it by $2 and the Executive behaved as if nothing happened at all,” Namdas said.
KEHINDE AKINTOLA, Abuja
