•President Buhari
A sharp division appeared to have emerged in the National Assembly over the 2016 budget.
Senators of Southern states may have advised President Muhammadu Buhari to withhold his assent on the controversial budget.
The lawmakers are said to be insisting
that the budget should not be assented to if the Appropriation
Committees of both chambers of the National Assembly fail to include the
Calabar-Lagos rail line project in it.
It also emerged yesterday that the
Presidency may have returned the fiscal document submitted to President
Buhari for assent to the National Assembly.
Sources said the Presidency asked the
National Assembly to include the Lagos-Calabar rail line in the budget
before submitting it to the President for assent.
The Senate on Tuesday told the Presidency to submit a supplementary budget on the project, if it felt strongly about it.
Lawmakers from the Southwest and their
Southsouth counterparts met at their caucus levels on Tuesday night to
discuss the controversy.
It was gathered that the lawmakers resolved to “resist any attempt to deny their people, the vital Lagos to Calabar project”.
While the Southsouth and Southeast
senators met in the house of a principal officer of the Senate over the
issue, Southwest senators met at the residence of Senator Gbenga Ashafa
in Abuja.
A senator who attended the meeting told
our reporter that they sensed that the “call for a supplementary budget
on Lagos to Calabar rail line was an attempt to deny the South an
opportunity to enjoy a vital rail project.”
Senator Adesoji Akanbi (Oyo South) who
confirmed the position of the southern senators, said the All
Progressives Congress (APC) caucus in the Southwest was solidly behind
the position of Ashafa, who is the Chairman, Senate Committee on Land
Transport, over the rail project.
Akanbi also insisted that assenting of
the budget without the inclusion of the N60b Calabar-Lagos rail project
would not be in the interest of the people of the Southwest
geo-political zone.
He said: “Personally, I see no reason
why the funds in the Ministry of Transportation should be moved
completely to the Ministry of Works for the construction of roads which
belong to state governments without engineering design.
“We are seeking the reversion of this
decision because the Calabar – Lagos rail project is very viable and it
cuts across states in the South South and South West and it would
galvanise the social and economic activities of the affected regions.
“Apart from this, the project is a joint
venture between Nigeria and China and it is time bound. Any attempt to
leave it out of the budget this year, will affect the execution of the
project”
The Oyo State lawmaker said that the
argument of the appropriation committees that they could not accommodate
the Calabar – Lagos rail project because it was not included in the
budget presented by Buhari was not tenable because a supplementary
provision was supplied.
He explained that a similar situation
happened in the Committee of Solid Minerals when the rents on some of
the ministry’s properties were omitted in the budget presented.
According to him, officials of the
ministry were asked to re-present a supplementary budget of N5 million
which was included by the committee and presented to the Appropriation
Committee and was accommodated in the final document.
Akanbi said: “ The situation is similar
to what happened in the committee on Land Transport because the
supplementary budget presented by the Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, is
allowed in the parliamentary process.
“Why should the money in the
Transportation ministry be moved to the Ministry of Works and voted for
the construction of roads that have no engineering design and does not
even belong to the Federal Government?”
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