The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Constituency

  • ‘I am grateful to my constituency’

    ‘I am grateful to my constituency’

    Nigerian performance artist and winner of 2015 Prince Claus Prize for Culture Development, Atiku Jelili, has hailed the art community for its support during his six-month trial at the Magistrate Court, Lagos. He said he was particularly happy that his hypothesis, which he tried to establish through the performance of Aragamago will rid this land of terrorism, was right.

    He said he felt extremely happy that the criminal charges against him and five others were dropped. “I tried to say that it was through the feminism energy that our world would be rid of terrorism. The case was presided over by a woman, who used the energy in her to do justice,” he said.

    Atiku and five others were arraigned for criminal charges of ‘constituting public disturbance, and inciting the public with his performance on January 14, 2016.’ The charges also included that the artist conspired with four others to ‘commit felony’ with his art. Magistrate J.O. Adeyemi of the Magistrate Court, Lagos, however, acquinted him from all the charges brought against him and five others last month.

    He noted that it would have been impossible for ‘us as defenders in the case without the support of the art communities in Nigeria and abroad, citing the efforts of Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA), Arterial Networks Nigeria, Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA), International Artists Forum in Germany and many other organisations like Frontline Defenders as outstanding and marvelous. “I wondered what we would have done without their efforts,” he added.

    According to Jelilil, the support of the art community and the artists is not only a demonstration of their relevance in re-engineering the society for change, but also the power of art and culture in promoting critical dialogue in every society.

    “The power of arts and culture has once again come to the fore as an important societal element in promoting critical dialogue essential in addressing topical issues. However, the collective energy of artists and cultural officers can set arts free when under attack by any social or political regime. These are the lessons I learned during the trial,” he said. To him, the ruling class would always wish to silence the arts and the artists, but he urged the artists to be truthful and honest to arts and its values.

  • Constituency ‘Porkjects’

    It has always been a dubious cost line in Nigeria’s public financials and perennial flash point between the executive and legislative arms of government. But the ego fight presently raging in the House of Representatives exposesthe sleaze surrounding appropriation for constituency projects in our national budgets like nothing seen before now. From all indications, legislativeappropriation for constituency projects is pork barreling at its best. (It is apparent, I hope, that ‘porkjects’ used in the title of this piece is a contraction from ‘pork’ and ‘projects.’)

    The National Assembly (NASS) hadpassed the 2016 budget on March 23. As if that wasn’t late enough, President Muhammadu Buhari declined to sign the document into law until May 6 amidst back-and-forth with the Legislature over “grey areas” said to have the distorted the government’s basic vision for the economy. Estimates for some specific projects were identified at the time as problematic, like that for the proposed Lagos-Calabar rail line; while Health Minister Isaac Adewole, at the budget defence, famously told legislators that he could not recognise the proposals then on the table as those that emanated from his ministry. Some budget officials apparently had taken the liberty to rewrite certain estimates as funds to be released into their private pockets. It was a scandal at the time that visibly fazed the President, with his one-dimensional ethics, and undermined his anti-graft crusade.

    But there was another leg of the budget “grey areas” that we now get a clearer view of what went down – no thanks to recriminations that lately ran amok in the House of Representatives over appropriation for constituency projects.The blame game popped in the House following the removal ofAbdulmuminJibrin (APC, Kano) as chairman of the Committee on Appropriation. Speaker YakubuDogara announced the replacement of Jibrin penultimate Wednesday with another House member, Mustapha Dawaki (APC, Kano), sayingJibrin had met him and volunteered to discontinue as appropriation committee chair”due to pressure of the work.” With the controversy that dogged the passage of the 2016 budget, however, very few bought the Speaker’s story and knew thatJibrin was pushed. This was readily confirmed byHouse insiders, who were widely reported as sayingJibrin was sacked at the behest of his members in the appropriation committee for allegedly using his chairmanship to hijack budgetary provision for constituency projects.

    Jibrin initially postured that he resigned, but returned smoking shortly after with allegations that the Speaker and three other principal officers of the House soiled their hands in the appropriation process and should quit.According to him, SpeakerDogara, Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun, Minority Leader Leo Ogor and House Whip Ado Doguwa “were not comfortable with (his) independent position and (his) refusal to cover up their unilateral decision to allocate to themselves N40billion out of the N100billion allocated to the entire National Assembly.” He further alleged, among other things: “The four of them met and took that decision, in addition to wasteful projects running to over N20billion they allocated to their constituencies…My inability to admit into the budget almost N30billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers also became an issue.” He didn’t spare mentioning that about 10 standing committees of the House inserted some 2,000 projects worth N284billion in the budget, and that he complained to Speaker Dogara but was ignored.Talk about budget pork!

    The accused principal officers dismissed the charges as fabrications and an afterthought by Jibrin, smarting from his removal as appropriation committee chair. Instructively though, Deputy Speaker Lasun acknowledged that there were “conventions and precedents as it relates to budgets and projects for principal officers of the National Assembly.”

    Weighing in last week, the chairman of House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, AbdulrazakNamdas, accused Jibrin of unilaterally inflating the 2016 budget by N250billion but was rebuffed by NASS leadership. He obliged an insight into legislative convention, saying: “The leadership of both chambers, including the appropriation and finance committees,are normally and traditionally allocated certain percentagesof these funds for inclusion in the appropriation bill for projects.The remaining is distributed to members of the National Assembly for inclusion of their preferred projects in the budget. This has been the established tradition over the years.”

    If you call that ‘padding,’Namdas would say you are just ignorant of the law, because the power of appropriation lies squarely with NASS, courtesy of Section 81 (1) of the 1999 Constitution that tags the President’s budget proposals “estimates.” The implication, according to him, is that the Legislature is at liberty to raise or raze those estimates.

    Whatever may be true as against what is muck in the allegations, the wheeling and dealing in legislative appropriation shows enough that constituency projects are a filthy cesspit in public financials.In principle, the idea is to ensure minimum government presence in every electoral constituency by having a project sponsored by the relevant legislator sited there. But the funding and execution of those projects over the years have tended between idle patronage for personal political gain and outright pilferage of the public treasury, rather than utility considerations for the constituencies. Appropriation for the projects is alsocharacterised by legislative arbitrariness that the executive has always found at variance with the actuality of national revenue stream. But once those projects are embedded in the budget, they assume a statutory character on account of which NASS often holds the executive fiercely liable in event of default. Even with the dire nature of our present economic realities, when Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) BabachirLawal hinted recently that the 2016 constituency projects as captured in the budget might not be implemented in view of huge shortfalls in revenue projections, legislators rose up in arms and summoned him to a hostile inquisition. He held his ground, though, given the inescapable reality.

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has been unsparing in condemning the legislators over constituency projects. Speaking after a private parley with President Buhari last week, he said:”They are the contractors, the jury, the judge and prosecutors. They put the projects in budgets and they do the projects by themselves or through contractors they nominate. Where is integrity? Where is honesty?” He as well faulted the framework for implementation, saying: “Who supervises the job? Who ascertains that the job has been done? It is not in their place to execute projects.”

    I, for one, doubt the moral ground on which the former president stands in his tirade. Constituency projects found their way into Nigeria’s appropriation law as a compromise with legislatorsduring his tenure, and records showed that he actually disbursed the cash designated for that expenditure head to the lawmakers in 1999. But he has also never hidden his strong distaste for the whole idea, and non-implementation of constituency projects was one of the charges on which the House, led by Speaker GhaliNaaba, attempted to impeach him in 2002. Now, you can’t beat his case on why constituency projects constitute a waste of public funds, as he said last week: “The question to ask is: assuming they execute the contracts – although we know they don’t, they usually pocket the monies – but assuming they execute the contracts, what becomes of the projects in future when they cease to be in the National Assembly? Who maintains them? When a project is not built by states, local governments or the federal government, they do not have a future.”

    Truth be told: appropriation for constituency projects in our national budgets is pork barreling that this country can ill-afford now or at any other time.

  • Constituency cheating

    If the so-called constituency projects are meant to contribute to the country’s development, it is likely that the country would continue to develop at an unacceptably slow pace, considering the revelations in the 2015 constituency project report by a civic technology organisation, BudgITNigeria.

    BudgIT’s Team Leader/Founder Oluseun Onigbinde said at the launch of the report in Abuja: “We have 221 abandoned projects, 145 were completed, and 77 are ongoing. The number tracked was 436 in 16 focus states.” The states tracked are: Lagos, Edo, Ondo, Delta, Jigawa, Niger, Kebbi, Kano, Kaduna, Gombe, Kogi, Ogun, Imo, Anambra, Cross River and Oyo.

    It is no news that, every year, the Federal Government controversially budgets massive amounts in connection with  constituency projects across the country, and this year’s budget for these projects is reported to be N100 billion.

    Onigbinde observed: “The unusual cost of construction in the country compared to its peers worldwide is mindboggling, thereby making contractors the biggest beneficiaries of developmental projects rather than the people.”

    Strangely, the people for whom these projects are supposedly meant often do not know about them. Onigbinde noted: “Citizens are not aware of the budgetary provisions for constituency projects. Secrecy in the preparation, enactment, and implementation of the budget, as well as a pervasive lack of transparency conspire] to keep citizens in the dark…”

    This may well be a form of corruption in a country where the corrupt seem to continuously explore ways to expand the scope of corruption. There is no doubt that lack of public access to information about constituency projects encourages corruption.  For example, according to the BudgIT boss, “Many projects were signed off and contractors were paid, with little or no follow-up reporting and assessment by government authorities.”

    Onigbinde added: “Certain projects in the budget are brazenly not executed as specified in the budget. There are several instances where the actual work done does not match the description of the budget provision. An example is the N20 million construction of two units of two blocks of three classrooms at Dakata and Tudun Murtala wards in Nasarawa Local Government in Kano State, where only one block of two classrooms was built, despite an awareness of the authorities that this project was being tracked.”

    Who will monitor constituency projects effectively, and how well can effective monitoring check corruption? The people who are supposed to be beneficiaries of constituency projects need to demonstrate greater political consciousness and demand greater transparency from their elected representatives.

    As for people in power who think constituency projects are a source of self-enrichment, they need to be told that this kind of thinking is stinking thinking.

  • ‘16 states abandoned 221 constituency projects’

    More than 221 constituency projects were abandoned in 16 states in 2015, a civic technology organisation, BudgIT Nigeria, has said.

    Of the 436 projects tracked in the 16 states, about 145 projects were completed, while 77 of the projects are ongoing, the organisation said.

    The states tracked by BudgIT include: Lagos, Edo, Ondo, Delta, Jigawa, Niger, Kebbi, Kano, Kaduna, Gombe, Kogi, Ogun, Imo, Anambra, Cross River and Oyo.

    Every year, the Federal Government budgets huge amounts on constituency projects across the country.

    The government budgeted N100 billion for the same projects in the N6.6 trillion budget this year.

    BudgIT’s Team Leader/Founder Oluseun Onigbinde explained that contract inflation by contractors was one reason constituency projects are abandoned.

    Onigbinde, who said this in Abuja at the weekend at the launch of 2015 constituency project report, said one of the challenges to development was the lack of access to information about projects in communities by citizens.

    “The unusual cost of construction in the country compared to its peers worldwide is mindboggling, thereby making contractors the biggest beneficiaries of developmental projects rather than the people,” he said.

    Onigbinde said most citizens are not aware of the existence of constituency projects in their communities because of secrecy in the preparation, enactment and lack of transparency to show that such project exists.

    He said: “We have 221 abandoned projects, 145 were completed, and 77 are ongoing. The number tracked was 436 in 16 focus states. One of the challenges to development is the lack of access to information about projects in communities.

    “Public projects, such as the construction of rural roads, schools, clinics and religious houses are often phrased in technical jargons, making it difficult for citizens to comprehend the budgetary information.

    “Citizens are not aware of the budgetary provisions for constituency projects. Secrecy in the preparation, enactment, and implementation of the budget, as well as a pervasive lack of transparency conspires to keep citizens in the dark as to what their government owes them.

    “Many projects were signed off and contractors were paid, with little or no follow-up reporting and assessment by government authorities. A corollary effect is that citizens are often restricted from asking questions due to the absence of information on project stipulations and status. Lack of an effective monitoring and evaluation body to verify project implementation and standards budget or project tracking is a vital aspect of the budget implementation process.

    “Certain projects in the budget are brazenly not executed as specified in the budget. There are several instances where the actual work done does not match the description of the budget provision. An example is the N20 million construction of two units of two blocks of three classrooms at Dakata and Tudun Murtala wards in Nasarawa Local Government in Kano State, where only one block of  two classrooms was built, despite an awareness of the authorities that this project was being tracked.”

    He, therefore, called on government to ensure that constituency projects are effectively monitored to ensure proper implementation.

    “Effective monitoring of awarded projects eliminates the opportunity for corruption; the use of substandard products; ensures the durability of project structures; enhances citizens’ trust in government and safeguards innocent lives from untimely death and needless injury,” he added.

  • Why govt may stop funding constituency projects, by SGF

    Why govt may stop funding constituency projects, by SGF

    Continued from last Thursday

    What has delayed the appointments of people into Federal Government boards?

    Let me tell you; it took some of the previous governments two years to make board appointments. Now, the issue of board appointments is moving faster than in previous governments. We need to do it very diligently. Up until September, only the president and vice president were running the country and their hands were too full for them to get engaged in board appointments. Then the SGF, Chief of Staff and quite some few others came on board, and it is the OSGF that co-ordinates all of these. The president approved the setting up of a committee late last year to do this. The first thing the committee did was to set up criteria for people who would merit being on a board in an APC government. We needed to get all the parastatals whose boards need to be constituted. Then we did what we called ceding, in the sense that we needed to share the boards in an equitable manner among all the states so that each state, as much as possible, would have its own fair share of board chairmen and board members. I think we started with close to 400 or 500 parastatals. It was not a mean job with board membership of, in those days, I think five to 6, 000 people -chairmen and members- from all the states and we decided to cede them in such a way that when it comes to a state, the board membership must also be representative of the local governments there. So, first, we ceded among the zones, then we said okay, maybe north east zone has 20 chairmanships and 1,000 board membership, then we go back and share the chairmanship in an equitable manner according to the weight of the parastatals because in government I understand there is Category A, B and C boards so that you do not end up with only Category C or A; so it is not a very simple job. While we were doing this, the government had to also look at the Oronsaye report which recommends the scrapping or merging of some parastatals. There was a White Paper by the former government on the implementation of the Oronsaye Report. So, this government decided to study that report which had very good merit in it because a lot of the parastatals were just doing nothing or were doing what others were doing.

     

    So, in considering the Oronsaye Report, is there any likelihood of carrying out the merger or scrapping of parastatals?

     Look, the Oronsaye Report is domiciled here as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. They did a good job, not necessarily that everything is acceptable. What happened to the Oronsaye Report is that they made their recommendations and took it to the Cabinet. By the time the White Paper came out, it appeared that only 40 per cent of the recommendations were approved for implementation by the White Paper. It appeared that every minister started defending his staff. So, for example, parastatals recommended for scrapping suddenly found themselves in the survival list, because government is like that. So, the Oronsaye Report was completely mutilated during the White Paper. While the activity in itself was commendable, as a government, it is only natural that we look at it in the context of our own objectives. So, we are looking at it. A lot of hardwork went into it, and we would like to study it and implement it in agreement with our policies.

     

    Are you most likely to also look at the 2014 Confab Report in that manner?

     Well, the government has not taken a decision on the 2014 National Conference. I understand that some Nigerians want it implemented but the government has been too busy with key areas of governance to talk about an exercise that we thought was essentially diversionary and a sort of, maybe, a ‘job for the boys’, because if you remember, it was reported that almost everybody in the committee got N7 million, and we consider it essentially as job for the boys. They probably produced a document that is good and commendable but I mean, this government is too busy with very more vital areas of governance, and we are not intending to spend our time reading reports. The exercise of governance is not about reading reports. The reports are here, so many volumes that for example, it would take me like seven days to go through. Economy needs attention I wonder what happens to my work while I am reading it; while the economy needs attention, unemployment is there, insecurity is there, people are blowing up pipelines and so on.

    How true is the allegation in some quarters that you are responsible for the travails of the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu?

    Let me tell you, the Office of the Secretary to Government is the punching bag of everybody, and that is how it should be. My own understanding of the present government in relation with the opposition is such that the integrity of our president has been established over his almost 73 years as solid; you cannot assail it. So, the only option left for you as a ‘dirty’ opposition since you must attack the government is to attack those less known. And those less known that are easy targets, that they think when they attack them, they are attacking the president are the SGF, the Chief of Staff, Minister of Petroleum and the CBN Governor, for one reason. These are appointive positions; they are not elective. Probably, they think that “oh, if we make him look dirty, the president would sack me.” In my life, I have seen Ekweremadu for, maybe twice, and the second one, was incidentally, in a church in Yola. I do not understand the psychology of, when you are accused of something, instead of defending yourself, you waste your time hunting for who could have been the cause of your travails. If they remove Ekweremadu as the Deputy Senate President, how does that personally benefit us? Of course, while I was in the party then as National Vice Chairman, it was the party position that because we are the majority party in Parliament, that we should produce all the Principal Officers. To that extent as an APC member, I am not happy that APC has not produced the deputy senate president. It is an aberration, but the senators decided, which is their constitutional right, to create the aberration. The solution, if they need any solution would lie with them not BD Lawal, not SGF because I am not a senator. I am the SGF. So, whoever tells you that I am responsible for the travails of Sen. Ekweremadu is burying his head in the sand rather than running.

     

    When is the president going to start dealing with corrupt persons in APC?

     Let us be very sincere and reasonable. Obviously, to my mind, the preponderance of corrupt people would be in the PDP for one reason; they have been in government for 16 years and they were the only ones enjoying the booty, and they were doing it in a flagrant manner. Tracing my own (political) genealogy for instance, from ANPP to CPC and now APC, we were not getting anything. Nobody was giving us contracts. PDP were the ones in government; they were the ones the president was approving money for sharing; they were the ones that took government money to fund their election. This is the truth. APC had no access to government money to fund the president’s election. It got to a stage when PDP saw it clearly on the wall; you remember they even shifted the elections; it was so clear they were going to lose, and so they thought they could buy it. Throughout the last tenure of the Goodluck Jonathan campaign, their goodwill among Nigerians was on the decline and they were spending, and it got to a stage that they did not care about following the due process anymore because they thought they were in power and they thought they could buy their way through and remain in perpetuity. So, they became even careless about the manner they were taking the money. Remember Nigeria even borrowed $100million from the international market to fund the war on Boko Haram and they simply shared it. APC did not go to borrow anywhere. We were not sharing oil wells. We had no access to NNPC funds. So, if these agencies were converted into agencies for looting and pilfering, it is obvious that even if we had corrupt men in the APC, they did not have the opportunity to steal, and that is assuming we had. I cannot, in all honesty, say that all of us in APC are saints, but the truth is, we did not have access to funds to steal in the first place, and so we did not have opportunity also to reject the stealing. So, let them roast in their stew. Let them carry their cross. They can make all the noises and try to deflate APC, but our hands are clean by providence. Look, let us face it. If they arrest you, why don’t you say, ‘I shared the money with so and so persons’ and then let him turn out to be in APC? Those that they are arresting, it is from the interrogation that the information burst out. Let them leave us alone. This is just the beginning. They will return our money by the time we finish digging their soak-aways and bringing down their (overhead) tanks; we would recover our money.

  • NASS and constituency projects

    In its editorial of June 26, with the title Unholy Alliance, The Nation castigated the National Assembly over its insistence on the implementation of constituency projects in the 360 Federal Constituencies and 109 Senatorial Districts.

    On June 20, the House of Representatives in conjunction with the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS) organised a one-day summit on Political Representation and Constituency Relations and Intervention Services in Abuja.  In the course of proceedings, Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo and Minister of Works, Housing and PowerBabatundeFashola delivered speeches expressing their opposition to the inclusion of constituency projects in the federal budget.

    Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. YakubuDogara, in his own speech countered the arguments against constituency projects drawing examples from different jurisdictions similar to Nigeria’s presidential democracy.

    Historically, prior to 1999 and indeed until 2003, the phenomenon of constituency project was alien to Nigeria’s budgeting system. However, with return to democracy in 1999 and the chronic failure of the executive to ensure even distribution of projects across the 36 states, 774 local governments and indeed all the electoral wards and the resultant disquiet from aggrieved Nigerians in the rural areas, lawmakers were left with no option but to begin the agitation for equitable allocation and distribution of federal projects nationwide.

    The Nation’s editorial mischievously tried to connote that the doctrine of separation of power as espoused by Montesquieu was being compromised as a result of legislators’ involvement in the execution of constituency projects. This is far from the truth because members of the National Assembly are neither given money nor awarded contracts to execute any constituency project.

    As Speaker Dogara stated, all that each member or Senator does is to identify the peculiar needs of his/her people, select location and type of the project and strive to ensure that it is implemented. All monies budgeted for constituency projects are domiciled in respective ministries, departments and agencies. It is the executive that award the contracts and execute them in the same manner as all other projects.

    Now, one major reason why lawmakers would always insist on having projects in the budget is that the executive hasn’t come clean on the issue of lopsided allocation of projects. The practice has consistently been that if the minister or permanent secretary or even directors in a given ministry or parastatal is from a particular part of the country, they would normally allocate a substantial percent of the projects or capital votes to their states or geo-political zones while leaving out the rest of the country to grapple with the remaining negligible percentage.

    Year-in-year-out, this has been both the practice and the norm. How do you expect a lawmaker to vote and approve an over 1000 page budget document running into trillions of Naira that has no single project for his constituents? What do you expect such a member or senator to tell their constituents?

    For the benefit of those who are either ignorant or doubtful, the philosophy of constituency projects is well embedded and encapsulated in the 1999 constitution in the federal character principle. More specifically, the constitution in section 14(3) states,  “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few States or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government or in any of its agencies.” This also extends to allocation and implementation of budget and projects which is well covered by the provisions of section 16 (1): “The State shall…harness the resources of the nation and promote national prosperity and an efficient, dynamic and self-reliant economy and control the national economy in such manner as to secure the maximum welfare, freedom and happiness of every citizen on the basis of social justice and equality…..”.

    AsDogara noted, Lagos State stands out as the first state to enact the law legitimising constituency projects just one year into the Fourth Republic in 2000. In fact, other states soon emulated Lagos and to some extent the federal legislature.

    Fashola implemented constituency projects for members of the Lagos State House of Assembly for the eight years he was the governor. The Vice President was Attorney General of Lagos State also and at no point in time did any of them contend that the Lagos law is unconstitutional. As Senior Advocates, why didn’t any of them challenge the Lagos law in court? Are they saying constituency project is only good and constitutional for Lagos State only? What else might have informed their sudden change of perception?

    The capital budget as proposed by Fashola’s ministry was N334.3 billion out of which he allocated N89 billion to his home region while the North-east, the most devastated and neglected region got a paltry N10b. How can anyone justify this and then turn around to oppose a token allocation of say N30 million for rural projects in the federal constituencies including the ones in the geopolitical zone that was allocated N89 billion of the ministry’s capital budget? A minister takes N89b to his region and turns around to attack N100b meant for Constituencies nationwide. Sadly, this is what The Nation sought to defend in its editorial.

    The argument has always been that the job of lawmakers is to make laws and no more, even then it is usually conveniently disregarded, the fact that annual budget or appropriation is one of the most important laws by the legislature.  We should be reminded that making laws is just one function while there are other more critical aspects of the work of MPs. The job of a lawmaker also includes representation which entails protection of the interests of their constituents by ensuring that they get fair treatment from government including a fair share of the national budget.

    But for constituency projects, many rural communities would never have known about the existence of the federal government let alone benefitting from budgets. Thanks to the mechanism of the projects which ensures that every year projects such as solar powered bores, hand pumps, school infrastructure, dispensaries, skills acquisition centres, poverty alleviation, etc are implemented, however poorly the implementation . Infact, it is on record that over the years, the executive deliberately frustrates the implementation of constituency projects to the point that not up to 40 percent has ever been implemented in any given budget year. Already unfortunately, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir David Lawal, has stated that the government may not be able to implement constituency projects in the 2016 budget. May be he doesn’t know that the Appropriation Act is a law that must be implemented unless of course if it is amended which can only be done if the government fails to meet its revenue targets.

    Needless to say that it is the monumental failure of the executive of successive administrations to implement budgets and ensure national spread of projects through even and equitable allocation of capital votes that compelled lawmakers to insist that a meagre or paltry sum be allocated for projects in constituencies nationwide. It is strange for a top functionary of an APC government to oppose a policy aimed at fairness and transparency such as constituency projects. For the avoidance of doubt, skewed development is corruption and it’s propagation in an APC government will be puzzling paradox.

    The editorial also carefully but deliberately ignored the many examples mentioned by the Speaker as obtainable in other jurisdictions that practice presidential democracy like ours, notably, close home here, Kenya which has even set up a fund called the Constituency Development Fund and so many countries that have followed or are in the process of enacting similar laws.

    The 1999 Constitution is loosely modelled after the American Constitution with the same system of presidential democracy. Their system fully and duly recognises constituency projects which in the USA is called “Pork Barrels”. Congressmen and women always ensure that they get a piece of the pork barrel for their constituencies in every federal budget. The Speaker cited specific examples of pork barrels attracted by some members of congress including but not limited to the ones attracted by Paul Ryan the current speaker of US House of Representatives. If those pork barrels are not unconstitutional in the US, how are they unconstitutional under the Nigerian constitution which is patterned after the US constitution? We are not oblivious of the concept of adaptation but the object of adaptation has never been retrogression.

    .

    • Hon. Namdas is chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Media & Publicity.
  • ‘Why I oppose constituency projects’

    ‘Why I oppose constituency projects’

    Chief David Onuoha-Bourdex, the All Progressives Grand Alliance candidate for Abia North Senatorial District in the last National Assembly Election in a chat explains why he is opposed to constituency peojects, reports Sam Egburonu

    IN the National Assembly today, Chief David Onuoha-Bourdex, who contested for Abia North Senatorial seat in the last National Assembly Election, is not likely to be one of the most beloved Nigerians. This is because the member of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) is waging a war against the provision for constituency projects in the annual budgets, even as he alleges that most of the lawmakers only hijack the proceeds to corruptly enrich themselves.

    Some lawmakers had dismissed his allegation, saying that his criticism of provision of constituency projects in the annual budgets was born out of pain and frustration of losing the 2015 senatorial election.

    Reacting to this in an interview in Lagos, Onuoha-Bourdex said, “Let me start by telling you that I did not lose the election into Abia North Senatorial District. What happened was that after I successfully waged a legal battle against the barefaced rigging and stealing of my mandate through intimidation of electoral officers, falsification and mutilation of election result sheets, a rerun was ordered by the court. Then during the rerun, the same brazen acts of rigging and intimidation by the ruling party in Abia State were repeated; this time using even the armed forces and INEC. So, I declared that there should be an end to litigation seeing that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was more desperate for the seat than to serve the interest of the people. I was not happy that during the consideration and debates on the 2016 Appropriation Bill, which was the first budget under the new APC (All Progressives Congress) Federal Government under President Muhammadu Buhari; Abia North Senatorial zone did not have a representative in the senate. Although a lot of stakeholders came to me to reconsider my petition against the outcome of the senatorial election, I told them that since my mission in politics is to serve the people, I have to protect their choice during the election by proving that I was robbed of victory by those who believe in impunity and the breach of the electoral process. I am happy that at the end of the day, it was clear as crystal that the result was manipulated against the expressed wishes of the people as demonstrated by the votes.

      Now concerning the call for an end to the bogus provision for constituency projects, I had told my people that within the first six months in the senate, I will bring about fundamental changes in the way the senatorial zone was being represented. One of the fundamental changes was to move a motion for the abolition of constituency projects from the budget.

      Let me tell you, I knew I would face opposition from my colleagues in the senate. I also know very well that the provision for constituency projects was meant to assist in redressing the deficit in infrastructure and social amenities in various communities. But records show that that laudable innovation had been hijacked by lawmakers to corruptibly enrich themselves at the expense of their constituents.

     So those who say I am calling for the removal of the conduit out of pain or frustration for not being in the senate miss the point. But I was prepared to make the change, because I was convinced that provision for constituency projects remained the major way previous administrations encouraged the culture of legislative corruption. In one of the interviews I granted before the Abia North Senatorial re-run election last March, I said my job of introducing changes in the Senate would be made easy, because there was a new party in power that preaches probity and accountability. I believe I was vindicated by the padding that surrounded the 2016 Budget.”

     Reminded that the senator for Abia North disclosed that lawmakers only choose project sites while relevant ministries handle the award of contracts and execution of the projects, he retorted:

    “Is that what he said? Maybe he was reacting to my call for the abolition of constituency projects. The truth is that even if they claim the money appropriated for constituency projects do not go to lawmakers on paper, we know that the legislators cleverly go underground to nominate emergency contractors and most times end up undertaking the projects.  There is abundant evidence of how such jobs are usually poorly executed without proper supervision. By virtue of their constitutional responsibilities, lawmakers are to hold the executive accountable. Now when they nominate contractors, who oversights the project execution? It sounds odd that lawmakers should have anything to do with nomination of contractors or even the siting of projects. They should focus on lawmaking, holding the executive accountable and ensuring better distribution of amenities and execution of projects through oversight and vetting of the budget.

      “Again, instead of providing native projects for lawmakers, the legislators should focus on their job of law making through painstaking oversight and holding the executive to account. The Arochukwu-Ohafia road has remained in its deplorable shape mainly because lawmakers see the project as source of easy money during oversight. If not that their hand has been greased by constituency projects, the lawmakers should have been better placed to ensure that deep and innovative thinking were brought to bear on the damaged road. They would have forcefully insisted that the executive should fix the road using the best contractors, materials and equipment. Arochukwu-Ohafia road has passed the usual cement and reinforced concrete approach. Marine engineers and contractors should have been penciled to handle the erosion-prone project. Such suggestions would have come from the lawmakers during oversight. But with their attention divided between nominating contractors, choosing benefitting communities and ensuring the take-off of the project, the lawmakers lose quality time for lawmaking and scrutinizing government expenditure thereby confusing the system of checks and balances.

      “I challenge any lawmaker to show Nigerians constituency projects that outlived the tenures of those lawmakers that attracted them. I think that after 17 years of democracy, politicians should move away from tokenism for electoral purposes and concentrate on the real issues of policy formulation and implementation to make our nation and democracy better. As an entrepreneur and investor, I know how the corporate mind works. If a contractor sends some freebies or kickback to the supervising authority, there is no way he could go ahead to deliver according to project specifications. In the first place, the money he gave to you must have reduced his profit and because he depends on profit to survive, he reduces quality, knowing that you have become powerless to hold him to account.

     “Lawmakers do all those things in a number of ways and the practice could be traced to the culture of electoral corruption and impunity through money politics, negotiated elections and impunity. When you see them talking about constituency projects nobody cares about durability or how they have shortchanged the system in other ways. We need to address the issue of true democracy before the call for true federalism.

      “I was also touched by the politics played around the Calabar-Lagos coastal rail line in the 2016 Budget. That project was in line with my idea that a well-developed rail transport system would open our country up for economic diversification through the easy movement of agriculture produce across hinterlands and to the metropolis. The benefits of that rail line to the socio-economic development of South-East, South-South, South-West and the whole country would not be over-emphasised.

    Apart from the attempts to remove the coastal rail line project from the budget, I was worried that the project may suffer a similar fate as the East-West road that remained uncompleted even under the Goodluck Jonathan administration. So, even if it is through supplementary appropriation, that project should be undertaken this fiscal year.

  • Reps, Dogara fight over constituency projects

    Reps, Dogara fight over constituency projects

    Some members of the House of Representatives are spoiling for a fight with their leadership over funds for constituency projects in the 2015 budget, amounting to N4.7 billion.

    The Nation learnt that the members accused the leadership of undermining the rules guiding the execution of constituency projects under the defunct Millennium Development Goals.

    A member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said about N30 million was allocated in the 2015 budget to each member, but was reduced to N13 million by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, on the excuse that there was cash backing.

    According to the member, the leadership decided to alter the pattern of executing constituency/MDGs projects through award of contracts.

    He said usually contractors were nominated by members, who also decide on projects suitable for his constituents and take it to the ministry responsible for execution.

    The member alleged that instead of adopting same pattern, the House leadership resorted to purchasing tricycles, motorcycles, generators, etc. which were sent directly to the constituencies.

    The source said the lawmakers were told they should abandon projects for supplies because the “2015 Budget will soon expire”, adding that members were asked to forward names of their contact persons as well as items they want supplied.

    While some of them were said to have complied, some refused when they discovered  the leadership unilaterally awarded the contract for the  items and sent same to the constituencies.

    Another member from the Southeast, alleged that the items sent to their constituencies was far less than the N13 million budgeted, as the leadership spent between N6 million and N7 million for each constituency.

    He said: “My contact person called to say that somebody called to tell him that the items meant for my constituency were at the state capital and that l should go there and pick them up”, he said

    The source said when the House resumes on Tuesday, the aggrieved lawmakers will table the matter, to absolve themselves of any blame from Nigerians.

    “You know there is a perception that everybody in the National Assembly is corrupt.

    ‘’But l am telling you that this is not true. Many of us here still value our reputation.

    ‘’We will not sit back and watch a few individuals destroy the reputation that took us years to build.

    ‘’We shall expose those behind this fraud so that the public will know that not everybody here is involved in shady deals,” he said.

  • Report exposes fraud in constituency projects

    An audit report has exposed an alleged fraud of  over N100 billion in constituency projects in the last three years.

    The report was based on a survey conducted last year by the Media Support Centre and released in Abuja at the weekend.

    It exposed large-scale abuse of the execution of projects by the 469 federal lawmakers.

    Implementation of the projects was transferred to the Ministry of Special Duties by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan to ensure coordination.

    The report alleged that most lawmakers still go behind to hijack the constituency funds and execution of the projects.

    It said budgets for the projects were shrouded in secrecy and allegedly diverted by some lawmakers.

    Executive Director of Media Support Centre Wale Fatade told reporters in Abuja that the poll covered over N100 billion voted for constituency projects between 2013 and 2015.

    He noted: “It would appear that nobody but the lawmakers know which projects are being executed with these monies and how much each project cost.

    “Our survey shows that Nigerians are not aware of the these projects and are calling for a reform in the administration of constituency projects.”

    Most Nigerians, he said, “either wanted the thing cancelled or that the lawmakers should ensure more clarity and openness by publishing what each lawmaker get and for which project so that Nigerians could track these projects”.

    Fatade added that over 78 per cent of Nigerians voted for the scrapping of the constituency project to reduce corruption.

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo last week accused the National Assembly of reckless spending and running a secret budget.

  • PDP celebrates victory in Oshiomhole’s constituency

    PDP celebrates victory in Oshiomhole’s constituency

    Thousands of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members in Etsako West Constituency II of Etsako West Local Government Area of Edo State at the weekend celebrated the victory of its House of Assembly candidate in the Court of Appeal.

    The party members danced across the constituency and in Uzaire clan. The celebration comprised a long convoy of vehicles. The people thanked the residents for their support.

    An Appeal Court in Benin, the state capital, last month, annulled the election of All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate and the lawmaker representing the constituency.

    It declared Sylvester Eruaga of the PDP the winner.

    Speaking during the celebration, PDP’s Vice Chairman and Edo North’s leader, Henry Duke Tenebe, noted that by the victory, a PDP lawmaker would represent Governor Adams Oshiomhole in the House of Assembly.

    He said: “The judgment has further enhanced the confidence of everyone that justice is real, irrespective of party affiliations.”