Fashola Supports APC’s ‘Block Budget Directive’

The Lagos State governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola, has supported the directives of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to all its National Assembly representatives to block all legislation of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

Governor Fashola said that the withdrawal of support by parliamentary representative from the executive does not in any way threaten democracy.

The Governor, who is an APC member, on Monday, told reporters  that the directive would help strengthen Nigeria’s democracy.

“It strengthens democracy because whenever people raise their voices at a point where they have no alternatives, instead of resorting to violence, they are resorting to a legitimate tool to bring the executive to the table to say let us talk. We must have a negotiated compromise in order to go forward”.

“It is a legitimate tool. The Americans have used it, the British have used it when it suited them in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, they told their government at a time to invade Iraq and when it did not suit them, in a spirit of non-cooperation to the government of the day which was a coalition, they said you cannot go to Syria,” he explained.

The Governor stated that the interest, which the subject matter had generated and some of the comments that had been made, especially by the Peoples Democratic Party, showed that there was a lot of learning about the democratic process that they still need to do.

He further explained that the theory of separation of powers recognised the need for “every one of the three arms of government to act as a check on one another”.

“The legislature has found the withdrawal of cooperation from the executive as a legitimate weapon in order to bring a belligerent executive back to the negotiating table,” he stressed.