Budget Padding Is Unknown To Law, Lawmakers Committed Forgery

legal practitioner, John Oloyede, has condemned the choice of words – budget padding, used to describe the ongoing controversy over the House of Representatives’ handling of the 2016 budget.

The lawyer who was the guest of Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Tuesday, said that there is no offence known to Nigerian law called padding.
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“Now you have a situation where self-confessed fraudsters – people in the National Assembly are coming on air to say ‘we padded’. No they did not pad, they forged and forgery is known to Nigerian law,” he said.

He condemned the manner in which different persons, particularly lawmakers, have tried to define the meaning of the word padding.

He recalled instances where lawsuits against some prominent Nigerians were set aside because the offences were not known to Nigerian law.

Mr Oloyede advocated the need to strengthen the institutions. “If the Police was strong enough, all these people should be in handcuffs; from the person making the allegations to the person sitting as Speaker in the House of Reps.

“Why is it that the institutions that are supposed to curb crime find it so easy to go after ordinary Nigerians in respect of stealing a goat but when these self-confessed criminals come out to say ‘I’m a thief, I forged the Nigerian budget’, nobody is talking, they are waiting for petition from one of those who forged?”

Power Of Oversight

There have been arguments that the practice of tinkering with the budget has been a culture of the House and cannot be referred to as illegal but Mr Oloyede maintained that the job of the legislature does not include changing the budget.

He argued that they are only expected to scrutinize the document in order to point out areas they agree or disagree with and make recommendations to the executive arm of government.

In explaining where the power of the House stops, he said, “They have the power of oversight, they have power to ensure that the budget is implemented as passed. They do not have power to allocate funds.

“In the first instance, it is the executive that knows the monies that are available for the execution of projects within a given year.

“So when they pass the budget, the oversight function dictates that the members of the respective houses can monitor the implementation.

“They can go to places where the projects are being implemented to ensure that every kobo that was allocated in the budget was spent on that project.

“You have no business moving money around.”

Mr Oloyede went hard on the idea of constituency projects. He referred to it as a means of stealing.

“The fight here is not really about honour, dignity or principles, it is about ‘you are trying to eat more than I am eating’.

“The law is clear, all these people are criminals,” he said.