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 jail.
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