Tag: Lawmakers

•Governor: it’s not true 

Lawmakers loyal to the embattled Speaker of the Kogi State House of Assembly, Momoh Jimoh-Lawal, otherwise called the G-15, have accused the Presidency of aiding in the flouting of law by Governor Yahaya Bello.

They spoke yesterday at a news conference at the official residence of Jimoh-Lawal in Lokoja.

Reading from a statement, the group’s spokesman, Sunday Shigaba (Bassa Constituency), decried the Presidency role in the crisis.

The assembly was shut last week, following the directive of Inspector General of Police Solomon Arase, who acted on the order of the Senate.

The G-15 alleged that the governor boasted of support from the Presidency.

They said: “It is rumoured that the governor boasted that he has the support of the Presidency to disregard due process and the rule of law in the conduct of the state affairs. No wonder, it is reported that the governor granted an interview last week in The Nation, precisely on March 30, after his meeting with the chief of staff to the President, claiming ignorance of any crisis in the House of Assembly and said his Speaker is sitting.

“It may, therefore, be most unfortunate to realise that the governor has the backing of the Presidency to perpetrate this high level of impunity and disregard for due process and the rule of law in the administration of the state at a time when citizens’ expectations are high against such.”

The legislators warned that any act by the rival leadership of the Assembly under Umar Imam as Speaker “as far as legislative activities in the state are concerned, remains null and void and of no effect.”

Shigaba said any transaction between the government and individuals, groups or institutions or even with the G-5, which requires the nod of the laws from the Assembly, is of no effect.

He said: “With particular note, the purported second reading as well as budget defence said to be undertaken by the G-5 in the Government House is of no effect.

“As civilised and law- abiding citizens, we have chosen to toe the path of honour and regard for due process and the rule of law, while waiting for amicable resolution of the crisis.”

The group hoped that the crisis would soon be resolved, and thanked the leadership of the National Assembly as well as the Forum of Conference of Speakers and the people of the state for standing in defence of the institution and democracy.

The Special Adviser to the Governor on Legislative and Assembly Matters, Yusuf Haruna, denied collusion by the government in the crisis.

He dispelled allegations against the governor that he boasted of support from the Presidency.

Haruna denied the purported payment of salary and allowances to only the G-5 members by the government. According to him, all lawmakers were paid their salary and allowances, which were inherited from the last administration.

Haruna denied the holding of budget defence by any section of the Assembly at the Government House, as alleged by the G-15 members.

Details of the budget will not be available for President Muhammadu Buhari until mid-April, lawmakers said yesterday.

Presidency sources said Buhari will not assent to the document unless the details are attached because the lawmakers merely sent a summary to him.

The Senate Appropriation Committee is working on the details.

House of Representatives Appropriation Committee Chairman Abdumumin Jubrin said there was nothing unusual in passing the budget and sending the details to the President later.

He said this was done during former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s tenure.

According to him, given the “lots of omissions” and being the most difficult budget we’ve ever dealt with”, the least the executive should do is to be grateful to the lawmakers.

 ”I think if they’re not thanking us, they cannot throw stones at the National Assembly,” he added.

Jubrin said: “We in the National Assembly believe that this is the most difficult budget we have ever dealt with. Of course, you all recall that the Medium Term Expenditure Framework ( MTEF) came very late; we accepted it, we dealt with it. The budget itself came late; we accepted it and we dealt with it.

“The budget has had a lot of challenges, which have to do with multiple budget details and, of course, ministers, heads of MDAs coming to disown their budgets. There were other key omissions in the 2016 budget that the National Assembly had to deal with.

“ In some instances, we discovered that budgetary allocations were  not in tandem with the policy thrust of the Federal Government, which is part of the responsibility of the Appropriation Committee, to look into that and try to align the allocations to match the policy thrust of government.

“And, of course, we saw a lot of omissions, inadequate provision for personnel across board.

“I’ve explained to you several times that the case of Prisons ration that was reduced far below the federal Government approved rates. We talked about the NYSC where only 210,000 members were captured as against 260,000. All these we did our best to see how to address these issues and a lot also could not be addressed.”

He said other areas the National Assembly intervened was to align the budget with the security thrust, anti- corruption drive and economic diversification Programmes of the government

 Most members of the Senate Committee on Appropriation met for over two hours yesterday to harmonise the controversial budget.  Many of the 14 members attended.

The meeting was held in the office of Senator Mohammed Danjuma Goje, its chairman.

A member of the Committee claimed that “the intention of the National Assembly was to transmit highlights of the 2016 budget while work continues on the details.”

The committee member who spoke in confidence further claimed that “there is no doubt that the budget as presented by Mr. President was full of errors and repetitions which made work on the Appropriation Bill more cumbersome.”

He said: “ We were in a fix few days to the passage of the 2016 budget when the National Assembly Budget and Research Office (NABRO) brought copies of the booklet they published, which contained errors they discovered in the 2016 budget.

“We had to agree that highlights of the budget be passed and transmitted to the Presidency while we withheld the details so that we can cross check the claims of NABRO in the booklet. From the look of things, it will take another two to three weeks for us to conclude work on the budget. We are not alone; financial experts are also involved in the scrutiny.

“As has been said by a top government functionary on some other national issues, we too are not magicians to correct an Appropriation Bill full of errors and outright distortions in a day.

“You can see that we are working round the clock to give the country an implementable budget.”

The NABRO booklet contains errors, repetitions and padding in the fiscal document.

It involved alleged fresh padding of over N500 billion contained in the budgetary proposals for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and  the Service Wide Votes.

NABRO said it published the document to give technical support to members of the legislature by pointing out some errors in the budget.”

It said: “Given the current challenge of abnormalities in the 2016 budget proposal where projects are repeated more than once in the budget, and others undefined, NABRO rose to the occasion by providing the legislature with an accurate and inclusive review of the line items in the 2016 appropriation bill.”

Goje declined to speak with reporters yesterday on the fresh round of controversy on the budget.

Line members of the Ekiti State House of Assembly yesterday stormed Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, to brief reporters on their alleged harassment from law enforcement agencies.

At the Iyaganku Press Centre of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) at 6.30am, the lawmakers said security agents  were trailing them.

Led by the Deputy Speaker, Adewumi Olusegun, they appeared to be on transit as they hurriedly addressed reporters and drove away.

The Chairman, Committee on Information, Gboyega Aribisogan, assisted by Dr. Omotoso Samuel and the Chief Whip, Akinniyi  Sunday, alleged that there were offerred $1million to impeach Governor Ayodele Fayose.

In their prepared speech, they unequivocally restated their loyalty to Fayose as they maintained that “no amount of intimidation, arrest, detention, harassment and monetary inducement will make us dance to the tune of those whose only interest is to truncate the Fayose-led government and return to power through the backdoor”.

The lawmakers said: “They should stop trying to get into power through the backdoor. They should stop this harassment, intimidation and use of federal power to oppress innocent Nigerians.”

They alleged that their lives were being threatened  “and we no longer feel safe in our homes in Ekiti State”.

“We want Nigerians to help us ask the police and their collaborators what the arms they claimed were stockpiled during the election used for? Could arms have been stockpiled and no violence, death or attack recorded during and after the election? “Why is the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State willing to ridicule all government agencies? Why have the police not arrested the APC Chairman, Jide Awe, who is wanted for alleged murder and Temitope Aluko, who was declared wanted by the court for perjury, and instead providing security cover for them?

“Even though we believe that the Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase, a thoroughbred professional, cannot be part of this clandestine plot, we call on Nigerians to impress it upon the police not to allow themselves to be used by desperate APC politicians. This is because doing so will further expose the penchant of the Buhari-led administration for dictatorship.

“No member of the Assembly is remaining in that state. It is not a question of nine of us here with you. All of us, the 26 members, were targeted but they were trying to arrest 11 of us. Some of us seated here have our names on the hit list.

“We are not going to hide for them. We will resist them with the last blood in our vein, we won’t be coerced. Let it be known to them that we won’t shift ground, no matter the amount of intimidation and harassment. We won’t go into hiding.”

On whether or not the incident is affecting their parliamentary functions, the Deputy Speaker said the lawmakers were still working and passing bills as at Tuesday.

Lawmakers have uncovered 25 fresh errors in this year’s budget, it was learnt yesterday. The items involved are allocated about N37, 025, 238, 407.

Of the amount,  about N21,623,323,649 voted for office repairs was  rated “avoidable” by the Senate and House of Representatives committees on Appropriation.

But there were indications that the committees may have drawn the attention of the Ministry of Budget and National Planning to the errors.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Sen. Danjuma Goje, and the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Hon. Jibrin Abdulmumin, were making frantic efforts last night to meet Tuesday’s deadline for the passage of the budget.

The two committees and the Ministry of Budget and National Planning were making last-minute consultations as at press time.

The errors were discovered at the last stage of the budget’s consideration.

It was gathered that the errors spotted by the National Assembly tallied with the input from many Civil Society Organisations, including CLP/ Reclaim Naija.

It was learnt that the mistakes are in the following eight areas:

• Duplication of budget line items;
• Budget items with quantities not specified;
• Budget items with no location;
• Large amount of money being appropriated for rehabilitation/repairs of office /residential buildings and purchase of office furniture and fittings;
• Budget items repeated over the past four years;
• Curious budget line items;
• Non-priority budget items; and
• Wrongly classified budget items

A document obtained from the National Assembly lists the breakdown of the errors, including curious budget line items(N6, 411,661, 956); duplication of projects(N3,567,605, 395); non-priority project items(N5, 422, 647,407); office repairs/ rehabilitation(N21, 623, 323, 649).

A source in one of the committees said: “We have identified 25 new errors in the budget involving about N37, 025, 238, 407billion.

“From the budget, we have discovered that the vote for the generation of 700 MW from Zungeru hydropower project was duplicated seven times and titled MOPWH161021632-40. For the same project, the amounts voted are as follows N750m, N113, 465, 000, N139, 426, 180, N126, 624, 383, N93, 767, 500 and N160, 000, 000.

“The National Bureau of Statistics projected to spend N256, 920,000 and N230, 705, 000 in the same budget on procurement of equipment, vehicles and furniture. At our session, we were amazed that we could still be having two estimates for the same project. Also, the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) is planning to execute Integration of Road Reference System with N150, 940,000 (FERMA 18015998) and N15,000, 000(FERMA 18021621) respectively.

“On its part, the National Intelligence Agency(NIA) is expected to use N2, 479, 581, 721 as refund to states for Federal Government Road Projects and the Ministry of Youth and Sport will spend N1, 731, 050,000 on kitting of Armed Forces and the Federal Airport of Nigeria(FAAN) has been allocated N340, 707, 625 for Wildlife Conservation. These are evidence of padding still subsisting in the budget.

A document on the analysis of the budget in possession of the appropriation committees reads: “From less than a dozen MDAs, over N21 billion can be saved and re-allocated to create needed jobs for the millions of unemployed youths.

“The money budgeted for rehabilitation/repairs (N10,774,052,415.00) by the ministry of Interior alone is more than double the entire budget of the Ministry of Women Affairs (N3,974,395,038). “More money should rather be voted for the Ministry of Women Affairs to be able to invest in the economic empowerment of women.

“The MDAs will not collapse if these projects are postponed to a future date when the country can easily afford to execute them.

“In the budget of the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation(OSGF), Procurement and Installation of security system has become a recurring decimal.”

The source added: “With due respect to SGF Babachir Lawal, we have realised that those in charge of the budget of OSGF might have committed blunders. For 2016, the OSGF has budgeted N1, 710, 322, 610 for procurement and installation of security system. The same office budgetted the following amounts in the last three years on the same item: N527, 000,000(2013); N1, 161, 356, 582(20140 and N316, 420, 274(2015).”

A source in the Ministry of Budget and National Planning,  said: “We are not aware of the so-called fresh errors in the budget.

“The budget is a proposal sent to them, it is their constitutional role to vet, amend, and come up with a clean copy.

“The minister of budget and national planning  met with the appropriation committees about three  weeks ago and he told them that the Executive was not expecting the National Assembly to pass the budget as presented.

“The budget is the property of the National Assembly now, we will not comment until they return it.”