Dogara: Tinubu's pretentious loyalty to Buhari will soon be exposed

In a statement by his special adviser on media and public affairs, Turaki Hassan, Speaker Dogara said Tinubu's "pretentious" loyalty to Buhari would soon be exposed.

He was reacting to comments by the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) accusing Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker Dogara of "working against" the Buhari administration, budget padding amongst others.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara ece-auto-gen

"The APC legislative initiatives while attempting to hoist noxious reactionary and self interested legislation on the nation," Tinubu was quoted to have said. “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.

"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”.

Speaker Dogara blamed the attacks against the 8th National Assembly on Tinubu's failure to "install his protégé" as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

He further described claims by Tinubu as outright falsehood and a display of ignorance adding that the 8th National Assembly has supported the Buhari administration in terms of the passage of more people-oriented bills.

"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," said the statement made available to Pulse on Tuesday, April 23, 2019.

"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.

"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."

Dogara blamed Buhari's ministers for the delay in the passage of the budgets.

"The chief cause of delay in enacting the budget is the persistent refusal or neglect of the Executive to present it in good time," he said.

"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, in 2016, the budget was submitted on December 22, 2015, exactly nine days to the end of the year. In 2017, the budget submitted on December 14,2016, just 17 days to the end of the year. In 2018, the 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. In 2019, the 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.

"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."

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"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.

"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.

"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.

"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.

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"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.

"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 two legislative days. Is Tinubu genuinely ignorant of all these?

"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."