Five members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the House of Representatives have defected to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
Thedefection letters were read out at plenary by the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal.
Members who defected are – Representatives Lawan Shehu Bichi (Kano), Sani Ibrahim Doruwa (Zamfara), Ibrahim Shehu ( Zamfara) Umar Bature ( Sokoto) and Abdusalam Adamu ( Kano).
However, the PDP also lost one member, Isah Mohammed Ashiru, (PDP Kaduna State) to the APC.
This appears to end the dispute between the two parties as the PDP appears to now have 178 lawmakers, while APC has been reduced to 168.
These defections were announced before the House commenced debate on the 2014 Appropriation Bill.
The lawmakers began debate on the budget following the ruling by Speaker Tambuwal on a point of order raised by a member that stalled the debate last week.
Representative Tambuwal in his ruling accepted that the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala must comply fully with the Fiscal Responsibility Act and submit the complete estimates of 31 government agencies to the House.
He however ruled that the debate should commence pending the submission by the minister.
The speaker further appealed to the lawmakers not to be distracted with the politics that has engulfed the country.
The Majority Leader, Rep. Mulikat Akande-Adeola (PDP-Oyo), who led the debate, urged members to put away individual differences and consider the budget for passage.
“As representatives of the people we must put individual differences away and look at national interest,” she declared.
The Deputy Minority Leader, Rep. Abdurrahman Kawu (APC-Kano), said that proposals in the 2014 Appropriation Bill were in sharp contrast with the provision of the law.
He said that in spite of promises to device ways of increasing capital expenditure, the government continues to increase recurrent expenditure which has little or no impact on the lives of his people in Kano.
According to him, the 2014 Appropriation Bill tends to cater more for the militants than the country’s national security agencies.
He said that N63 billion was expected to cover stipends and allowances of 30,000 Niger Delta militants, reintegration of transformed ex-militants and amnesty programmes.
Contrastively, Kawu said the total capital budget allocated to the Ministry of Defence and police formations is pegged at N41.08 billion.
“We must ensure that we compel all government officials, including ourselves to make sacrifices on behalf of our people who had long been starved of social safety net by reducing the recurrent expenditure and frivolous spending that accompanied this 2014 appropriation bill.
“We must ensure that 2015 politicking does not distract us from playing our oversight role on this budget,’’ he said.