Shut down of works on 2nd Niger Bridge, Lagos/Ibadan road, others imminent—Fashola
A clearer picture of the reasons behind the delay in assenting to the 2017 national budget by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo were on Thursday, unmasked in Abuja by the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola.
In an interactive session with select editors, the visibly aggrieved Minister, revealed that series of distortions in several capital budgets including strategic ongoing contracts in his ministry by the National Assembly put the Executives at crossroads on whether or not to assent to the document immediately it was transmitted to the presidency.
It would be recalled that apprehension trailed the observed strange delay in assenting to the budget by Acting President three weeks after it was passed by the lawmakers.
Giving a graphic detail, Fashola revealed that it was unfair to the Executive arm for the Legislature to distort agreed allocations to strategic capital projects after public hearings on the budget and defence of the fiscal estimates by the ministries.
He said a lot of mega capital projects had their original allocations slashed by the lawmakers, thus creating a scenario that may end up dotting abandoned projects across the country at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
According to him, “What I have in my budget now is primary healthcare centres, boreholes”.
“We were asked to complete those abandoned projects; the budget of Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was reduced by the National Assembly from N31bn to N10bn.
“We are owing the contractors about N15bn and they have written to us that they are going to shut down.
“Also, the budget of the 2nd Niger bridge was reduced from N15bn to N10bn and about N3bn or so was removed from the Okene-Lokoja-Abuja road budget.’’
Continuing, the minister revealed that “Everybody is complaining about power supply but they also cut the budget for Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and the Bodo Bridge that connects the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Station was also cut and all these were also discussed”.
He queried that “If after we have defended the budget and we had gone and the legislature unilaterally changed the budget, what is the purpose of deliberation?’’
The aggrieved minister opened up saying “That was the meeting we had with the Acting President and that was the reason why the budget was not signed on time”.
Fashola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) argued that it is unfair to Nigerians after public hearings were conducted with taxpayers’ money and consultations with the lawmakers only for the budget to be altered, cut or padded.
As if the cuttings were not enough for the lawmakers, the minister brought to the open that apart from the 200 uncompleted roads he inherited from the previous administration, the lawmakers added 100 roads.
“These roads are not federal roads and some of them do not have designs, how do we award roads that were not designed irrespective of the power you have?
“It is unconstitutional for the National Assembly to legislate on state roads.
“A budget is an estimation plan that set in motion what is to be spent, how much will be borrowed and how much will be collected.
“The executive controls all the machinery for collecting taxes and other revenue with relevant data from the Ministries of Finance, Physical Planning and the Budget Office and others.
“I am not saying that the legislature cannot contribute to the budget, but I hold the view that it cannot increase the budget because they do not collect the revenue with which to run or implement the budget,” not so elated Minister noted.
