Dogara shouldn’t resign – Na’Abba ‘House running not transparent’ We‘re barred not to speak – Namdas
By Abdulaziz Abdulaziz
Abuja
Members of the House of Representatives agitating for the resignation of Speaker Yakubu Dogara and other principal officers, over allegations of budget padding, yesterday widened the dragnet by accusing the executive arm of abetting the scandal.
The Transparency Group which boasts of 206 members of the House as signatories to its cause claimed that though the principal officers of the House may be guilty of inserting “outrageous sums” into the budget, the executive arm of government was not free of blame either.
The group’s position also tallied with that of a former Speaker of the House, Umar Ghali Na’Abba, who also accused the Executive of being collaborators. The ex-speaker also condemned the call for Dogara’s resignation, insisting there is no “formal indictment” on the speaker.
In a chat with Blueprint yesterday, spokesman of the group, Rep Bashir Baballe (APC, Kano), pointed accusing fingers at some unnamed ministries and the Budget Office, both of which, he alleged, aided the padding racket “from the very beginning.”
Baballe also raised questions as to why a high-level panel constituted by President Muhammadu Buhari to vet the document before his assent, failed to detect the grey areas.
“If for example, the budget was thoroughly checked by those charged with the task, the president may come to find out how one ‘Muhammadu Buhari Film Village’ was built into the budget and struck it out before it even got out,” he said.
Na’Abba also corroborated the position of the lawmakers on the complicity of the executive arm, adding that any such underhand dealing “cannot be possible without active connivance with some members of the executive arm”.
“According to my understanding, where the issue being referred to as padding comes into play, it is a situation where some members go behind and add items of expenditure to what has already been agreed upon. For either stealing the funds or doing whatever they feel like doing with it.
“So far, accusations are being traded amongst members of the House, but no investigation has been conducted.
On the call for the resignation of the Speaker, the question is: what has the Speaker done to warrant his resignation?” he queried.
Both the House’s Transparency Group and Na’Abba were united in calling for “holistic and thorough investigations of everybody involved in the budget scandal.”
The group, however, reiterated their call on Dogara and the affected principal officers to vacate their seats, saying the leadership of the lower chamber has failed integrity test.
Some lawmakers, who spoke to our correspondent under anonymity yesterday, also levelled some allegations against Dogara. These ranged from inequality in treatment of members to lack of transparency in implementing the House’s budget.
Blueprint’s investigation revealed that the teaser that led to the current crisis engulfing the House began when summaries of signed copy of the 2016 Appropriation Act were shared out to the lawmakers in the first week of June.
A few of the lawmakers, it was learnt, began to raise eyebrows when the budget analysis prepared by the National Assembly Budget and Research Office, was circulated.
“We noticed that the insertions that some of us were busy denying were actually true. And, not only that, we also detected serious cases of preferential treatment of allocating huge number of constituency projects to one lawmaker and others given only a few.
“We felt that was very wrong because no lawmaker is bigger than another. We are all elected representatives of our people and in that light, no one should be given preferential treatment in terms of project or entitlements,” said a lawmaker who declined to be named.
According to him, “there was no basis that one man will have allocations of N3 billion for his constituency while another lawmaker from the same state, will be allocated mere N150 million.”
Another lawmaker from Kaduna state, who also chose not to be named, told Blueprint that Dogara’s management of the House’s budgets was also a source of concern for them as the process of expenditure is allegedly shrouded in secrecy.
“A lot of things go unchecked in the House. Right now, if you go to the House, most of our committee rooms have malfunctioning air conditioning systems, which was a source of embarrassment when the wife of the president recently visited the House and everyone was sweating.
“Members also started seeing some strange deductions for which there was no clear explanation. Meanwhile, the DTA allowances for legislative aides was paid only once. You know things cannot remain like this.
“And with all the tension generated over vehicles for members, I can tell you that up till this moment, only the principal officers got their own about three months ago. No one is talking of our own,” he said.
However, spokesman of the House, Hon. Abdulrazak Namdas declined comment on the matter when contacted by our correspondent.
He said: “We are loyal party members and we are standing by the party’s instructions to stop making any pronouncement on the matter.”
