Last week, Babatunde Fashola, Minister of Power, Works and Housing called out the National Assembly for cutting the budget
meant for his ministry to carry out its duties.
In response, Abdulrazaq Namdas spokesman of the House of Representatives, on Thursday said Fashola should be bold and sincere enough to tell Nigerians why his ministry inserted N20
billion for miscellaneous expenditure while the second Niger Bridge had N12 billion
estimate.
According to Namdas, “there is a clear judgment in favour of NASS 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.”
He continued to explain that,
‘when I told the minister that they
budgeted N17 billion for environment impact assessment (EIA) in Mambila, 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 the 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?
