Reps abandon work for lunch with Presidential aide

Members of the House of Representatives hurriedly adjourned on Wednesday to enable them honour a special lunch date with the Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters, Abba Aji. They will, however, conduct a mid-term assessment of the 2009 Budget today (Thursday).

This is even as President Umaru Yar’Adua forwarded a letter to the House asking it to approve the virement of ₦25,791,449,579.00 from the Federal Capital Territory 2009 Budget.

In the letter to the Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, which was read during the plenary session, Mr. Yar’Adua said his request is in consonance with Section 289 of the 1999 Constitution. The section vests the legislative powers over the Federal Capital Territory on the National Assembly.

Mr. Yar’Adua said that the request would enable the FCT Administration fund the construction of additional lanes on each carriage way of the outer Northern Expressway (ONEX) including two fly-over bridges and the rehabilitation of Airport Road fly-over.

The House, which resumed plenary session on Tuesday after three weeks recess, usually sits in the afternoon every Wednesday between 2.00pm till 6.00pm.

House leader, Tunde Akogun, when moving motion for adjournment, said the House adjourned ahead of schedule time in order to attend the invitation of the presidential aide. Mr. Bankole, however, ruled that the announcement should not appear in the records of proceedings of the House.

But some members expressed surprise while the lunch could not wait till after their normal session especially as a number of bills had been listed for debate and seven reports of the committee on Public Petitions were listed for consideration.

Out of the seven bills, only one was considered with none of the reports being considered during the plenary session.

The only bill considered was “A Bill for An Act to Provide for the Distribution and Payment to the State Governments of some Taxes and Duties collected by the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) or Other Authorities of the Federal Government and Other Matters Connected Therewith, 2009.”

Among the bills that were not treated as a result of the lunch break are “A bill for an act to repeal the Export (prohibition) Act, No. 7 of 1989 and for related matters,” “A bill for an Act to prohibit the investigation of anonymous petitions by security agencies and for related matters (second reading),” “ A Bill for an Act to Amend Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (Establishment) Act,” “A bill for an Act to provide for the Repeal of the Nigeria Press Council Act 1992 and establish the Nigerian Press and Practice of Journalism Council.”

Apparently dissatisfied with the presiding officers on why the House had to adjourn because of the lunch despite the huge task before them, some lawmakers described the adjournment as insensitive to the yearnings of Nigerians.

And worried about the poor implementation of the 2009 Appropriation Act by the executive arm, the lawmakers will today conduct a mid-term assessment of the budget.

Mr Bankole announced the planned debate on the 2009 Budget performance following a point of order raised under matters of urgent national importance by Igo Aguma (PDP, Rivers) complaining that the executive arm of government had only implemented 21 percent of the budget so far.

“We are going to discuss the output side of the budget tomorrow- that is the releases made so far. We will also be looking at the input and outcome side of the budget. Please do your research very well before tomorrow as we will be dealing with facts and figures’, the Speaker said.

Mr. Aguma drew the attention of the House to newspaper reports of Monday, June 22, 2009 in which the Federal Government was reported to have implemented only 21 percent of the budget as passed by the National Assembly.

He recalled that the special assistant (communications) to the minister of finance, Deborah Chinwe Okafor disclosed that the performance of the budget showed that 21 percent of the capital budget was complemented for the first quarter, while revenue for the quarter under performed by 32 percent.

The special assistant was quoted as saying that “despite early releases of the first quarter warrants on January 9, 2009 for ongoing projects, capital budget implementation averaged 20.68 percent (₦33.26 billion) out of the ₦160.84 billion cash backed by the office of the Accountant General of the Federation.”

She also said that the aggregate Federal Government actual revenue under performed by ₦182.24 billion (or 32.18 percent) as against the budgeted amount of ₦566.30 billion.

Mr. Aguma suggested that in order to safeguard the Appropriation Act, the House should urgently step in and look at the state of the budget implementation.

The Senate had a few days ago complained over the poor implementation of the ₦3.1 trillion budget and express fear that this year’s budget may perform worse than that of 2008.