ABUJA—THE Senate yesterday tackled former president, Chief
Olusegun Obasanjo over his allegation that the National Assembly was using
constituency projects to siphon public funds, saying the former president was
out to denigrate the sanctity of the
parliament.
The Senate also claimed that it was
Obasanjo’s administration which approved that the constituency projects be
built into the national budget which was executed by the executive and
challenged Obasanjo to furnish Nigerians with details of how the National
Assembly members became executors of the national budget, rather than being law
makers.
Chief Obasanjo had on Wednesday
during a book launch in Abuja, accused the federal lawmakers of corruption. He
said: “Apart from shrouding the remunerations of the National Assembly in
opaqueness and without transparency, they indulge in extorting money from
departments, contractors and ministries in two ways. They do so during visits
to their projects and programmes and in the process of budget approval when
they build up budgets for ministries and departments who agree to give it back
to them in contracts that they do not execute. They do similar things during
their inquiries.”
obasanjo
According to the former president,
“corruption in the National Assembly also includes what they call constituency
projects, which they give to their agents to execute but invariably full
payment is made with little or no job done. In all this, if the executive is
not absolutely above board, the offending members of the National Assembly
resort to subtle or open threat, intimidation and blackmail. When the executive
pays the huge money, normally in millions of dollars, all is quiet in form of
whitewashed reports that fail to deal effectively with the issues
investigated”.
Responding to Chief Obasanjo’s
allegations, the Senate, speaking through the chairman of its Committee on
Information, Media and Public Affairs, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, described the
allegation of corruption against it by the former president as unfortunate and
an attempt to tarnish the image of the National Assembly.
The Red Chamber said in the
statement that it was unfortunate that the former president would distort the
issue of constituency projects to mean a direct monetary advance to lawmakers
and thus amounting to the “promotion of corruption” by the National Assembly.
Describing the allegation as
spurious, Abaribe in the statement said the former President’s comment was
distant from the truth and nowhere near reality, adding that if it were so, the
former President would not have tolerated such for the period he was president
of the country.
According to him, “President
Obasanjo for the avoidance of doubt, was the initiator of the constituency
project in the year 2000 as a means of ensuring that projects were fairly
spread across the country using Senatorial zones as the spring board.
“To ensure execution of the
projects, President Obasanjo again factored the constituency projects into the
annual budgets to be implemented by the executive depending on availability of
funds. That is to say that no lawmaker ever comes close to the funds or even determine
the contractor for the said projects or when the said contract would be
awarded.
“So, it looks curious and surprising
that President Obasanjo would turn around after over ten years of initiating
such a project to allege that the National Assembly is performing the function
of both the executive and the parliament.
“Is it not preposterous for anybody
to believe that members of the National Assembly would, against the provisions
of the constitution with regards to application of separation of powers, award
contracts ‘to their agents to execute’ and expect the Presidency under a
President Obasanjo or any other President for that matter to pay for what they
are not part of?
“Such allegation stands logic on its
head, as it amounts to an indictment of the Presidency for wilfully
contravening the budget laws by ceding its power to execute to the National
Assembly, if it was the case.”
The Senate according to Abaribe
therefore, challenged the former President to go a step further to furnish
Nigerians with details of how the National Assembly members became executors of
national budget rather than being law makers.
He said: “It will also help to clear
the allegation once and for all, if any presidency official not only from the
time past but currently, could come forward and explain the true position of
the so-called constituency projects. Doing so would at least set the records
straight.”
The Senate spokesman cautioned
political leaders to be wary of the consequences to our democracy of dragging
the revered institution of lawmaking to public odium just to score some
political point.
-- Vanguard News
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