APC Vs PDP: Senators Clash Over 2014 Budget
The Senate on Tuesday began debate on the 2014 Appropriation bill with members disagreeing along party lines on its passage.
While the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, senators commended the bill and called for its immediate approval, their All Progressives Congress, APC, counterparts sought its rejection and return to the Executive for a rejig.
To the PDP senators, the appropriation bill should be passed because it would promote economic growth and add fillip to the Transformation Agenda of the Goodluck Jonathan administration. But the APC lawmakers believed that it was not packaged to empower the people and address insecurity in the country, especially in the North-East.
In fact, one of the APC lawmakers, who said the bill “does not worth the paper it was written on,” called for the resignation of the Minister of Finance and the Supervising Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, because she had disappointed Nigerians.
The Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma – Egba, in the lead debate, had explained that the budget was premised on the 2014 -2016 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, which took into consideration, the heightened global economic uncertainty in 2013. He attributed the drop in the 2014 budget estimates to the challenges caused by oil theft, pipeline sabotage and production shut-ins at oil fields.
He went ahead to urge his colleagues to support the budget’s second reading and committal to committees for further consideration.
The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, also appealed to his colleagues to take the debate on the budget with all seriousness it deserved because it was key to the implementation of ongoing projects in the country.
He, however, expressed concern that some critical projects being executed in various parts of the country were not captured in the 2014 budget.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs, Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe, urged the lawmakers to follow the example of the APC-controlled Rivers State by passing the budget without further deliberation.
However, most of the APC members who contributed to the debate like Senators Ahmed Lawan, Alkali Jajere, Abubakar Yar’Adua, Abdulmumuni Hassan and Babajide Omoworare, condemned the budget and asked their colleagues to reject it.
Lawan, who described the budget as anti-people, said it was packaged to further boost the economic power of politicians, senior civil servants and high networth industrialists.
He stated that 74 per cent of the N4.6 tn was set aside for recurrent expenditure while 26 per cent was for capital projects.
The senator wondered while over N100bn was allocated to the Niger Delta, which is currently enjoying relative peace while only N2bn was allocated to the North-East, which is experiencing a high level of insecurity.
He said,
“What I am saying is that the funds proposed for defence are far low compared to the amount earmarked for 30,000 militants and the Amnesty Programme in the Niger Delta. The amnesty programme and the 30,000 militants will have N52bn while defence will have just about N34bn. And what we are saying is that we have a state of emergency in the North-East and that security agents should be well funded... I believe that while fighting insurgency, we need to have a special package or special funding or some kind of Marshal Plan for the North-East. And for the proposal for N2bn, I say we reject it as North-East Development Initiative by the Federal Government compared to N163bn going to the Niger Delta. Are we serious about tackling the problems in the North-East?”
Lawan asked the National Assembly to rework the budget, leave whatever was proposed for the Niger Delta, but make appreciable funds available for the North-East.
He then called for the immediate resignation of Okonjo-Iweala over her failure to reduce the recurrent expenditure in the 2014 budget.
He said,
“What we are saying is that only about 13 per cent is going to the masses of this country. How do you create jobs and alleviate poverty, the people must be at the centre. They should be at the centre of the implementation of the budget. We cannot have peace when we spend much of our funds on ourselves. We have to spend the bulk of our funds on the people so that everybody will have something to do and everybody would be safe.”
Source: Legit.ng
