{"id":9924,"date":"2018-06-20T20:33:08","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T02:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nigerianews.ca\/?post_type=news&p=9924"},"modified":"2018-06-20T20:33:08","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T02:33:08","slug":"we-are-not-rubber-stamp-legislature","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"http:\/\/nigerianews.ca\/news\/we-are-not-rubber-stamp-legislature\/","title":{"rendered":"“We are not rubber-stamp legislature” – House of Reps tell Buhari about\u00a02018 #budgetpadding"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The leadership of House of Representatives,\u00a0on Wednesday,<\/span><\/span>\u00a0vowed not to concede to plan by President Muhammadu Buhari to turn the legislative arm of government to rubber-stamp.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The House\u2019s reaction came barely 2 hours after President Muhammadu Buhari signed the N9.120 billion appropriation bill into law.<\/p>\n

In his speech, Buhari had accused\u00a0National Assembly of introducing 6,403 projects worth N578 billion after cutting 4,700 projects worth N347 billion from the budget proposal presented to the joint session of the National Assembly in November, 2017.<\/p>\n

The President who argued that most of the newly introduced projects fall within the purview of\u00a0States and Local Governments, were not\u00a0\u201cproperly conceptualized, designed and costed\u201d maintained that they will be difficult to execute, adding that<\/p>\n

In his reaction, Abdulrazak Namdas, chairman, House Committee on Media and Publicity however noted that the House and indeed National Assembly acted in tandem with relevant provisions of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) which confer upon the Legislature, the power of appropriation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe House of Representatives is appreciative of President Muhammadu Buhari in signing the 2018 Appropriation Bill into law and wish \u00a0to make the following observations:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat the budget is usually a proposal by the Executive to the National Assembly, which the latter is given the constitutional power of appropriation to alter, make additions, costs or reduce as it may deem necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Legislature is not expected to be a rubber-stamp by simply approving the Executive proposals and returning the budget to Mr. President. Therefore, the additions Mr. President complained of in his speech are justifiable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are on the same page with Mr. President in his desire to return our budget cycle to January-December. By the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007, the budget estimates should be with the National Assembly around September of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the case of the 2018 budget, the estimates came behind schedule in November 2017, even though this attempt was seen as one of the earliest in recent years. Going forward, we urge the Executive to speed up the reporting time to the National Assembly by complying fully with the FRA.<\/p>\n

\u201cBesides, there were delays that should be blamed on the heads of MDAs. Mr. President will recall that he had to direct ministers and heads of agencies to go to the National Assembly to defend their proposals. This came after the National Assembly had persistently raised the alarm over the non-cooperative attitudes of these government officials. On this grounds, the delay in passing the budget cannot be blamed on the legislature,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While responding to allegations on the new projects, Namdas said: \u201cOn this aspect, we have to remind Mr. President that we are representatives of our people and wish to state that even the common man deserves a mention in the budget by including projects that will directly affect his life positively.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the projects designed by the executive, as high-sounding as their names suggest, do not meet the needs of the common man,\u201d Namdas observed.<\/p>\n

In response to the allegations on the N73.96 billion increase in the National Assembly\u2019s Statutory Transfers, Namdas explained that: \u201cbefore\u00a02015, the budget of the National Assembly was N150 billion for several years. It was cut down to N120 billion in 2015 and further down to N115 billion in 2016. In 2017, the budget was N125 billion and N139.5 billion in 2018. This means that the budget of the National Assembly is still far below the N150 billion in the years before 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we commend Mr. President for a good working relationship, we also wish to state that we have a job to do, which requires adequate funding as well. The additional costs and projects to the budget were done in good faith for the sole purpose of improving the lives of Nigerians.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally, we welcome the proposal by Mr. President to forward a supplementary budget to the National Assembly to address other areas of pressing demands and commend the President and the entire executive arm for a cordial working relationship,\u201d the Adamawa lawmaker stated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The leadership of House of Representatives,\u00a0on Wednesday,\u00a0vowed not to concede to plan by President Muhammadu Buhari to turn the legislative arm of government to rubber-stamp. The House\u2019s reaction came barely 2 hours after President Muhammadu Buhari signed the N9.120 billion appropriation bill into law. In his speech, Buhari had accused\u00a0National Assembly of introducing 6,403 projects […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"news-category":[317,323],"yoast_head":"\n"We are not rubber-stamp legislature" - House of Reps tell Buhari about\u00a02018 #budgetpadding<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""We are not rubber-stamp legislature" - House of Reps tell Buhari about\u00a02018 #budgetpadding\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/nigerianews.ca\/news\/we-are-not-rubber-stamp-legislature\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""We are not rubber-stamp legislature" - House of Reps tell Buhari about\u00a02018 #budgetpadding\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\""We are not rubber-stamp legislature" - 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