According to him, about 20 legislators in both the House of Representatives and the Senate padded the budget.
Revered lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN) has said that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration is beginning to cover up corruption cases like former president Goodluck Jonathan's government.
He said the unilateral insertion of projects worth about N100 billion in the 2016 budget by the National Assembly was “a clear case of conspiracy, fraud, forgery and corruption.”
In
a statement issued on Sunday, August 14, Falana cited different
sections of the 1999 Constitution and Fiscal Responsibility Act to
buttress his point that the padding of the 2016 budget was illegal and
unconstitutional.
According to him, about 20 legislators in both the House of Representatives and the Senate padded the budget.
He said: "Both the Senate and the House allocated to themselves N60 billion and N40 billion respectively.
“It
is established that the alterations were effected after the passing of
the budget by both houses the issue at hand goes beyond padding. A clear
case of conspiracy, fraud, forgery and corruption can be established
against the suspects.”
Falana explained that
padding “takes place when legislators resolve to rewrite the budget by
introducing new items outside the estimates prepared and presented to
them by the president.
“The controversy over the
padding of budget was laid to rest with the enactment of the Fiscal
Responsibility Act, 2007 which has imposed a duty on the finance
minister to source input from certain institutions including the
national assembly during the course of preparing the budget.
“That
is when negotiations and horse trading with the executive by the
legislators is allowed. But neither the Constitution nor the Fiscal
Responsibility Act has empowered the National Assembly members to
rewrite the national budget by including constituency projects whose
costs are arbitrarily fixed by the legislators.”
He
said only Buhari “is given the exclusive power to cause the budget to
be prepared. Upon the preparation of the budget by the executive, it
shall be laid or presented to the National Assembly by the president.”
In
debating the Appropriation Bill, the human rights lawyer argued that
the legislators might reduce the estimates if there “are errors or
inflation of the cost of items or if certain items provided for has been
purchased before or for any other genuine reasons.
“But
the National Assembly cannot increase the budget in any manner
whatsoever. So, the unilateral introduction of constituency projects is
totally illegal and unconstitutional. By introducing new items, the
National Assembly has usurped the powers of the President to prepare the
budget.
“In other words, the legislators would
have prepared the budget and laid it before themselves and then passed
it. That is a negation of the doctrine of separation of powers. The
appropriation bill or amended appropriation bill is not like other
bills. Whereas other bills shall emanate from either of the two houses,
money bills shall emanate from the President.
“So a
money bill is a special bill which cannot be subjected to additions by
the national assembly because it has no power to prepare it. Padding is
an unconstitutional infraction when the estimates are increased on the
floor of the House. The infraction becomes criminal when the
Appropriation Bill is altered by a few legislators after it had been
passed by both houses of the national assembly.”
On
Dogara's comment that the padding of the 2016 is not a criminal
offence, Falana said the Speaker's confidence “is likely to have been
anchored on the statement credited to the presidency that the budget was
not padded in any material particular.
“Before
then, the All Progressives Congress (APC) had decided to follow the
discredited path of the PDP by treating the serious allegation of
monumental corruption as a family affair of the ruling party.”
He
said the federal government failed “to act timeously. In other words, a
cover up is no longer possible at this stage as the cat has been let
out of the bag. For now, Dogara has no choice, but to defend the
criminal allegations.
“Contrary to Dogara’s
misleading contention, the Legislative Houses Powers and Privileges Act
has not conferred immunity on him with respect to allegations of
criminal offences. Since the immunity conferred by the Act is limited to
contributions to debates by members of the National Assembly, he cannot
ward off the invitation of the Nigeria Police and the EFCC to react to
the criminal allegations leveled against.”
Falana
recalled when the 2005 appropriation bill was under consideration in
the Senate. He said some senators, including the then Senate President,
padded the budget of a ministry after collecting N55 million bribe from a
minister.
He added that the case led “to the
removal of the senate president who was later charged with his indicted
colleagues and the minister. The Supreme Court has recently ordered that
the suspects be tried for corruption having thrown out the preliminary
objections filed against the charges by them at the trial court.”
Abdulmumin Jibrin,
the sacked Chairman of the Appropriation committee had revealed how the
Dogara and other principal officers of the House smuggled projects
worth billions of naira into the 2016 budget.
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