Bola Tinubu
Jagaban vs
Bola Tinubu
Jagaban vs NASS: Dogara Blasts Tinubu Hard
– Tinubu pursuing facist agenda to control all levers of power
in Nigeria- Speaker Dogara
– Only the ignorant with dubious academic certificates will say
the maker of a document has padded the document that only he can
constitutionally make
We have noted the statement issued on April 21, 2019 by Asiwaju
Bola Ahmed Tinubu wherein he stated his reasons for sponsoring or
supporting some aspirants to various leadership positions in the
forthcoming 9th Assembly. Ordinarily, this would not have elicited
any response from His Excellency, the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Rt Hon Yakubu Dogara, as Asiwaju is entitled to
sponsor those he believes will have no choice but answer to his dog
whistles anytime he blows same in his capacity as the self
acclaimed National Leader of his party.
2. If Asiwaju had confined his intervention to stubborn facts,
this response would not have been necessary. He, however, used the
opportunity to manufacture falsehoods and paint a non-existing
picture of the stewardship of Mr Speaker and the work of the 8th
House of Representatives under his watch. It is therefore,
incumbent on us to set the records straight for posterity.
3. Asiwaju Tinubu accused the leadership of the National
Assembly of stymieing “the APC legislative initiatives while
attempting to hoist noxious reactionary and self interested
legislation on the nation”. He said further: “Just look at the way
Saraki and Dogara and their ilk hijacked the Budget Process these
past four years. National budgets were delayed and distorted as
these actors repeatedly sought to pad budgets with pet projects
that would profit them”. He continued, “Even worse, they cut funds
intended to prosper projects that would have benefited the average
person. After four years of their antics halting the progress of
government, we should do all we can to prevent a repeat of their
malign control of the National Assembly”. He generously used the
usual unexplained words like installing a progressive leadership
and so on.
4. We do not expect Asiwaju Tinubu to dwell on brazen mendacity,
much less murder facts and decorum in his rabid bid to justify his
patently clear facist agenda of controlling all levers of power in
Nigeria. Asiwaju Tinubu’s nocturnal agenda has no parallel in the
history of any democracy and it is more loathsome when he throws
caution to the winds and maligns government officials who are doing
a yeoman’s job of stabilising the government of President Muhammadu
Buhari, even in spite of political differences.
5. It is on record that the Rt. Hon. Speaker has done more to
stabilize this government more than Asiwaju Tinubu and his ilk
whose stock in trade is scheming, manipulation and subversion
especially when they feel they cannot be caught. When the history
of Buhari’s administration is written by those who know the truth
of what really transpired in the last four years, Asiwaju’s
pretentious loyalty to President Buhari will then be exposed. We
won’t say more but no matter how long it may last, the truth will
one day overtake lies. Perhaps, Asiwaju is still bitter about the
leadership contest for Speakership of the 8th Assembly, even though
the actors have moved on culminating in Speaker Dogara
magnanimously facilitating the appointment of his opponent in the
race and Tinubu’s protege as House Majority leader.
6. The chief cause of delay in enacting the budget is the
persistent refusal or neglect of the Executive to present it in
good time.
For the records, in the last four years, there was no urgency or
plan by the Executive to achieve a January to December budget
cycle. For the avoidance of doubt, we will show the dates the
Budget estimates were submitted by the Executive in the last four
years below.
– 2016 Budget was submitted on December 22, 2015, exactly nine
days to the end of the year.
– 2017 Budget submitted on December 14, 2016, just 17 days to
the end of the year.
– 2018 Budget was presented on November 7, 2017, the earliest
even though it also fell short of the 90 days stipulated by the
Fiscal Responsibility Act.
– 2019 budget was presented on December 19, 2018 exactly 12 days
to the end of the year.
As if the late or delayed submission of budget estimates wasn’t
enough, in most cases, Ministers and heads of agencies contributed
to the so-called delay by consistently refusing to appear before
National Assembly Standing Committees to defend their budget
proposals in line with the provision of the Law. At some point, the
leadership of the National Assembly had to take up the issue with
the President who advised his Ministers to honour legislative
invitations to defend their budgets.
7. What Nigerians don’t know is that the Executive, through the
various Ministries, continued to propose additional projects to be
included in the 2018 budget even as at April and May of 2018 which
further delayed the passage of the 2018 budget. These were
communicated officially and if anyone is in doubt, we will exhibit
the letters with the dates they were written and received. In any
case, the National Assembly inserted a clause in the Appropriation
Bill consistent with S.318 of the Constitution which allowed the
Budget to last for 12 months after Mr President’s Assent. This
enabled the Executive to spend more of the capital component of the
Budget as it still had 12 months protected by law.
8. As an activist legislature, the National Assembly effected an
amendment to S. 81(1) of the Constitution to compel Mr President to
present the Budget estimates not later than 90 days to the end of a
financial year in order to solve this problem but unfortunately,
very unfortunately, Mr President declined assent to the bill which
was passed by both the National Assembly and over 2/3rds of the
State Assemblies.
9. The National Assembly made a further attempt to make the
Budget process much better by improving the institutional capacity
of the Parliament to process and pass National budgets by passing
the National Assembly Budget and Research Office (NABRO)
Establishment Bill into law. It was loosely modelled after the
American Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Again, Mr President
declined assent to the Bill.
10. It is important to emphasize that the National Assembly is
not a Rubber Stamp Parliament and reserves the right, working
cooperatively with the Executive to interrogate projects
unilaterally inserted by the Executive branch without the input of
or consultation with Parliament. The legislature cannot be accused
of padding a Budget it has unquestionable constitutional power to
review. The Budget is a law and the Executive does not make laws.
Therefore, it’s only the ignorant and those who hold dubious
academic certificates that say the maker of a document has padded
the document that only he can constitutionally make. In the words
of his lordship, Hon Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High
court, in suit No.FHC/ABJ/CS/259/2014 delivered on March 9, 2016,
“the National Assembly was not created by drafters of the
Constitution and imbued with the powers to receive ‘budget
estimates’ which the first defendant is constitutionally empowered
to prepare and lay before it, as a rubber stamp parliament. The
whole essence of the budget estimates being required to be laid
before Parliament is to enable it, being the Assembly of the
representatives of the people, to debate the said budget proposals
and to make its own well informed legislative inputs into it.”
11. The parliamentarians are representatives of the Nigerian
people and you don’t expect them to rubber stamp budgets that are
heavily skewed and lopsided against most sections of the country.
It is their responsibility to ensure equitable and even
distribution of capital projects across all the nooks and crannies
of the country, if the Executive fails to do so. In any case, it is
false to state that legislative intervention in the Budget Process
is to benefit the legislators and not their constituencies. We
challenge Asiwaju Tinubu to prove otherwise. He should also show in
what way the 8th Assembly acted differently from other Assemblies
of the past to warrant the kind of language used. In any case, all
the aspirants to the Senate Presidency and Speakership he is
sponsoring are majority leaders in the 8th Assembly and took part
in the Budget Process that he made the chief basis of his crude
attack. This proves beyond doubt the hypocrisy of Asiwaju’s stated
reasons for supporting his candidates. He should find better
reasons other than the lies being peddled about the Budget and
obstructing government business. Asiwaju shouldn’t take better
informed Nigerians for fools. Otherwise, when he sought to take
control of the 8th Senate and 8th House in 2015, was it because of
any Budget Saraki and Dogara had delayed or pet projects they had
inserted into any Budget before 2015? Asiwaju must come clean on
this matter. He should let Nigerians know why he wants to install
both the Senate President, the Speaker and leadership of the 9th
Assembly. He may yet win the support of some of them if he comes
clean on this matter.
12. The 8th National Assembly is on record to have supported Mr
President’s requests on critical issues of governance. We backed
him by Resolution on the issue of fuel subsidy, we backed him on
the National Minimum wage, even though we were more sympathetic to
workers’ rights. In security matters, we never cut any proposal
from Mr President save our refusal to rubber stamp a clear
constitutional overreach of spending $1 billion in arms purchase
without appropriation. We have passed more Bills than any Assembly
before us including Bills that are helping the government improve
the ease of doing business in Nigeria, and there were times we
passed Bills within 2 legislative days. Is Tinubu genuinely
ignorant of all these?
13. We challenge Asiwaju Tinubu to list out the Bills he claimed
were not passed by the National Assembly. The oil and gas or
petroleum sector is the most important and critical sector of our
economy which accounts for over 70 percent of our earnings, the
Executive didn’t forward a single Bill to the National Assembly to
reform and reposition the sector in the last four years even when
repeatedly urged to do so by Mr Speaker in his first year in
office. The lawmakers waited in vain and had to take the bold
initiative of crafting a Bill – Petroleum Industry Governance Bill
(PGIB) among others, passed it in record time and transmitted same
to Mr President for assent. This Bill was vetoed without an
alternative Legal framework proposed by the Executive. Did Asiwaju
miss this also?
14. Asiwaju Tinubu should mention the so-called bills the
Executive sent to the National Assembly and were delayed to show he
is a man of honour or forever keep his peace. Could someone also
challenge Asiwaju to list all the “ noxious reactionary and self
interested legislation on the nation”? Can he name the bills that
are reactionary and not in the national interest? Is this how
wayward lust for power blinds the reasoning of people we should
ordinarily respect? Is it not most unfair, unpatriotic and wicked
for Asiwaju Tinubu to have resorted to factoids in promoting his
known fascist agenda which he mistakenly thinks he is keeping
secret.
15. Finally, we advise Asiwaju Tinubu to be circumspect in his
use of language. In this case, he spoke as a spokesperson of
depravity. Our reaction must therefore be seen as a provoked
counter-punch. Any one can descend into the gutter if he so wishes
but no one has a monopoly of gutter language. We won’t run an adult
day care centre anymore on matters like this.
Turaki Hassan
Special Adviser (Media & Public Affairs)