Hon. Samson Osagie represents
Orhiomwon/Uhunmwode Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives. Last
Tuesday, he moved the motion which led to the House summoning the Minister of
Finance, Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, over the alarm she allegedly raised that the
nation could be shut down by September if the National Assembly refused
to pass President Goodluck Jonathan’s 2013 Budget Amendment Proposal. In this
telephone interview, Osagie throws light on how the issue of constituency
projects remains the bone of contention in the current face-off between the
National Assembly and the Presidency.
What do you have to say
about media reports that the current stand-off between the Executive arm
of government and the National Assembly over the 2013 Budget arose due to the
fact that the Presidency refused to execute the constituency
projects in the Appropriation Act?
I am not surprised because the issue
of constituency projects has been the source of conflicts between both arms of
government. I insist that due to our level of development as a country,
lawmakers better understand the problems of the people. As such, we have
every right to insist that development projects must be executed. We have no
apologies to anybody for taking that position.
Our problem with the Executive stems
from the undue tardiness that they always exhibit in implementing capital
projects in general; not just constituency projects. Apart from constituency
projects, which constitute less than 20 % of the approved capital expenditure
of the budget, there are so many other capital projects that were initiated by
the Executive arm itself which they are not executing. It was only
recently that the Federal Ministry of Works has been seen everywhere trying to
look at the roads.
What about the other sectors like
health, education and power? The constituency projects are not just for members
of the National Assembly. They are projects meant for the development of our
people. The budget is not segmented as to say there is an aspect devoted
to only constituency projects. They are all capital projects introduced into
the budget by members of the National Assembly.
We know the problems confronting our
people and they include lack of basic amenities like electricity, potable
water, good roads and schools. During our electioneering campaigns,
we made promises to our people that we would provide these amenities to them
when elected.
No Minister has ever visited
the nooks and crannies of this country to solicit for the support of the people
during the electioneering period. It is the legislators that visited every
hamlet and village to interact with the people. So we are properly placed to
ask for development projects for our people.
But going by the letter President
Goodluck Jonathan sent to the National Assembly two weeks ago, which could be
referred to as 2013 Budget Amendment proposal, he gave the impression that the
National Assembly diverted funds from certain top priority capital projects
like the Lokoja-Abuja Highway, Kano-Maiduguri Highway and several others like
that. Can you give your perspective on that?
Let me also tell you that it is an
anomaly to ask for an amendment to an Appropriation Act. The best approach
should have been for the President to present a supplementary budget proposal.
A supplementary budget is meant to address the revenue shortfall for a
particular project in a particular fiscal year. In order to address this
problem, the President ought to come with a supplementary budget proposal to
make up for the projects that need to be executed. On the issue of moving
funds from one budget sub-head to another, only the Committee on Appropriation
can speak about that.
Even at that, what about the initial
funds appropriated for various capital budget heads? How
much of those funds have been released? If, for instance, you requested
for N10,000 for a project, and only N8,000 was appropriated, the question that
needs to be asked first is whether you have spent the initial N8,000 allocated
for the project? The answer to that question is no. So, what they ought
to have done is to first utilize the funds that have been appropriated and then
come by way of supplementary budget to ask for additional funds to cover
the ground that needs to be covered.
So, the idea of hiding under an
amendment budget, to renew the entire budget is unacceptable and is unknown to
our constitution in terms of budgeting. That is the problem on ground.
Even the Senate has said that given
the nature of the so-called amendment proposal which is so voluminous, it is
unlikely that the senators can consider it before embarking on vacation. Do you
know that the Executive asked for an additional N40 billion in the amendment
proposal they brought? So, what the Executive is trying to do is to blackmail
us and cite that as excuse for their failure to implement the 2013 Budget.
How do you mean?
This is because most sectors of the
economy are not working. Those who are handling the economy are causing
confusion by giving the impression that economic growth has no relationship
with job creation and other concrete indices of development.
Nigerians are being deceived about
the state of the economy.
How can they say there is economic
growth when the people cannot feed or get jobs?
But there’s SURE-P and they also
claim to have data showing that they’ve been creating jobs?
They said they are creating jobs here
and there under the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P).
How many people do you know who have secured jobs under the SURE-P ? You can’t
just assemble 30 young unemployed people and pay them N10,000 and repeat
that in another three months and you call that job creation.
The handlers of our economy think
that Nigerians are fools who don’t know what they are doing. The people cannot
see the impact of what the handlers of our economy are doing; it is not being
felt despite all the propaganda. That is why we in the National Assembly are
saying “we are no fools”. If you say we have tampered with some of the budget
heads, we have the right to do so for good reasons.
They have not released the funds we
appropriated for capital projects. As a result of this, ministries, departments
and agencies of government (MDAs) are crying over non-release of funds to them.
What can you say was the reason for the slash in the recurrent expenditure
projections of the budget?
The Committee on Appropriation is
working out the details on that. However, there was an issue pertaining to that
which has been confirmed by the Ministry of Finance. You may recall that
after the 2013 Budget was passed by the National Assembly, the Ministry of
Finance and the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation came out to
tell Nigerians that they discovered over 450,000 ghost workers in the civil
service. But the salaries and allowances of those ghost workers had
already been appropriated for in the 2013 Budget. What happened was that both
personnel and overhead expenditure proposals were unreasonable in most cases.
There are agencies which exist on
paper but which are not on ground and budgetary provisions were made for them.
Really?
So, if in an effort to exercise the
role of acting as checks and balances on the Executive, we decide that such
agencies do not require bloated allocations, you cannot blame us. It is left
for them to come forward with convincing arguments to tell us these are the
total statistics of the work force they have. But when they who are making
the proposal to us telling us that they have ghost workers in the
service, it means they don’t even know how many actual workers they have.
It is the same people that appropriate
money for both real and ghost workers. Until they are sure of how many workers
they have in the service, we cannot be certain if what we appropriated for
workers salaries is not even more than what is required.
The unnecessary alarm that the Minister
of Finance, Dr (Mrs) Okonjo Iweala, has raised was designed to
blackmail and stampede the National Assembly into doing what they want. It is
for this reason that we have said that the picture the Minister has painted
about the budget is not correct.
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