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‘Block Budget Directive’ Capitalising On Defections

Several Nigerian lawmakers are defecting from one party to another with the All Progressives Congress (APC) getting a larger share of lawmakers joining the party. … Continue reading ‘Block Budget Directive’ Capitalising On Defections


Several Nigerian lawmakers are defecting from one party to another with the All Progressives Congress (APC) getting a larger share of lawmakers joining the party.

As always said, ‘Politics is a game of numbers’ and this is yielding results for the APC, which had embarked on massive wooing of aggrieved members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last quarter of 2013.

Not less than 35 lawmakers in the House of Representative defected from the PDP to the APC after five governors of the PDP defected in November last year.

Few weeks back, some 11 PDP Senators wrote a letter to the Senate President, David Mark, declaring their intentions to defect to the APC.

Two weeks after the letter was sent to the Senate President, it has not been read in the floor of the Senate for the defection to take effect.

The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, said that Senator Mark had told him that the defecting Senators had a dialogue with him (Mark) on the issue and that since there were no further words from the Senate president, the Senate cannot discuss the issue in his absence.

The Senate spokesman, Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe, explained that it was resolved that the Senate President would have to seek further legal advice because of the legal issue that was thrown up during an earlier discussion of the issue.

According to him, the defecting Senators had gone to court against the presiding officer, a development that had made the Senate to suspend the issue until after the court proceedings.

But Senator Babafemi Ojodu of the APC said that the matter of defection was not in court.

“The matter that went to court specifically requested that the court should ensure that the position of the defecting Senators should not be declared vacant.

“The court gave an injunction that nothing of such should happen in the Senate or House of Representatives.

“The matter in court is not about defection. It is about the consequences of defection.

“It is not the first time that people are defecting. Why is it that when the opposition is gaining ground that you are using all kinds of technicalities to keep them away from doing so? They should not lose sleep over it because the world has already known. They are already participating in the party’s activities. When the time comes for us to vote they will vote on our side,” he said.

Another APC Senator, Garba Marafa, pointed out that there was no rule stating that the Senators’ letter must be read before they defect.

“There is nothing to worry about because these people attend public functions of the APC.”

A PDP Senator, Ita Enang, pointed out that “if any person defects from any political party to another the seat becomes vacant. You walk outside and leave the seat of PDP where it is. You do not take the seat of PDP to APC because it is the PDP that won the seat”.

“There was a proposed amendment to the constitution that independent candidates should be allowed in elections. The amendment failed. If it had succeeded, if anybody contests an election as an independent candidate and wins, the person will be the owner of that seat. But if lawmaker defects under any party’s platform, his seat becomes vacant and the person will go and contest election. When the seat is vacant the person will go and contest under the new party’s platform,” Senator Enang explained.

For Senator Marafa, it is not the first time that Senators are defecting. He said that the integrity of the Senate President was at stake, as some Senators of the 6th Assembly, under Mark’s leadership, defected to the PDP.

“If the Senate president declares the seat vacant, it will raise issues because in the 6th Assembly several Senators defected to the PDP under Senator Marks watch and their seats were not declared vacant. The senate president is someone that a lot of us can vouch for his integrity and I can assure you that nothing will happen even when people are defecting from his own party to another party,” he said.

The Senate president had held a meeting with the Senators intending to defect to avoid possible division in the Senate.

Cashing-In On Numbers

These defections have empowered the APC, as it has raised the number of APC’s lawmakers to equal that of the PDP in the House of Representatives.

The party has cashed-in on the increased number of lawmakers to show its relevance even as an opposition party.

A directive was issues by the APC to its lawmakers both old and the added numbers, gotten from defections, to block all executive bills. The party said the directive was issued to coerce the Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, into intervening in the crisis in Rivers State, which it said was affecting its members.

The expected deliberations and eventual passage of Nigeria’s 2014 budget, presented to the National Assembly by the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, in December 2013,  have been caught-up in the middle of the events.

Despite this directive, the budget has passed the second reading in the Senate, apparently due to the fact that the defection letter written to the Senate President had not been read; a development that some APC lawmakers said was a tactic by the Senate leadership to delay the defection.

In the House of Representatives, it is a different ball game altogether.

When the budget was brought up for deliberations, a member of the House of Representatives, Hon Emmanuel Jime, of the APC, raised a point of order.

He pointed out that the law required that an estimate of the budget appropriations must be submitted with the budget, which was not adhered to.

“What we have is a summary and abridged version of the estimate. The Minister has no responsibility under this law to give us her own summary,” he stressed.

However, a PDP lawmaker, John Enoh, said that the budget estimate submitted had the needed estimate added to it. He insisted that the House should not stop the consideration of the budget on the ground that no estimate was submitted.

The Speaker of the House, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, mandated some members of the house to look at the issue and advise the presiding officer accordingly. They were given 24 hours to advise the presiding officer.

After the day’s plenary, some lawmakers told reporters that the opposition was looking for a means to stall deliberations on the budget, apparently obeying the directive issued by the party’s leadership.

Unremitted Funds To Federation Account

The law making arm of government also looked at the controversy surrounding the Central Bank of Nigeria’s claim that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation did not remit $20 billion to the Federation Account.

While the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation is still reconciling the $10.8 billion earlier discovered not to have been accounted for, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) gave a new figure, saying that the total amount not remitted to the Federation Account was $20 billion.

The CBN also said that the NNPC’s claim that it used part of the unremitted funds for Kerosene Subsidy payment was contrary to a directive it had received stating that the subsidy had been suspended.

The NNNPC says the CBN does not understand petroleum technology dealings and insisted that the CBN’s changing figures were affecting the reconciliation process.

The Corporation said it spent the monies on pipeline repairs, subsidy payment and maintenance of the nation’s reserve.