The impasse over the 2016 Budget assumed a rowdy dimension in the House of Representatives with members demanding the resignation of the
Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumin Jibrin.

They were furious that Jibrin influenced the allocation of projects worth N4.169billion to his constituency outside what was budgeted by the Executive.

Also, members opposed allocation of N40billion( at N20b a piece) to those in the leadership of both the Senate and the House.

They specifically faulted the concession of projects of over N3billion to the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara out of the N20billion for the House leadership.

Amidst shouting match, the lawmakers said the House should do away with past practices of personalising budget.

It was gathered that sensing likely protest at the plenary over the budget, the Speaker and his principal officers opted for an Executive session.

The Executive session began at about 11.30am on a sombre note with the Speaker offering some rapprochement in order to calm down frayed nerves.
A source at the session said: “After initial courtesies, the Speaker hit the point by claiming that everything being said about the budget remains hearsay because the Executive has not returned the Appropriation Bill.

“He quickly added a caveat by urging members to avoid anything which could affect the unity of the House.”
Lending weight to the Speaker’s plea, Hon. Monguno (Borno) urged members to “wait for reactions until the budget is returned.”

It was gathered that Dogara’s plea fell on deaf ears as members raised issues on the controversy surrounding the budget.

Some of those who spoke at the session on the budget included Nnana(Imo); Aliyu Sani Madaki( Kano); Prof. Mojeed Alabi(Osun); Douye Diri (Bayelsa) and Comrade Phillip Shuaibu( Edo).

Jibrin, who rose to defend the budget details, met more than he bargained for.

A ranking Representative said: “Most members were not persuaded by attempts by Jibrin to incite them against the Executive. They rose up and started shouting at Jibrin for not doing a diligent job.

“Some asked him whether it was the Executive that asked him to allocate huge projects to his constituency when there was no provision for these in the proposals of the Executive.

“Many were yelling and demanding Jibrin’s immediate resignation for the ineffective manner the Appropriation Committee handled the budget.

“Even when the Speaker called for calm, they shouted that they “cannot defend the indefensible in the press because Nigerians are angry against the National Assembly for playing politics with the budget.”

A lawmaker from the South-West said: “At the Executive session, members asked the leadership about the N40billion projects allocated to the principal officers of the Senate and the House. Each of the leadership of the two chambers will share N20billion projects.

“Members queried why N3billion projects have been allocated to the Speaker and why Jibrin favoured his constituency with N4.169billion projects.”

“The leadership said the N20b projects were captured under zonal intervention as it had been since 1999 but members said if others were doing it in the past, it should not be now.”

Some of the projects allocated to Jibrin’s Kiru/Bebeji Federal Constituency are:

•N100m for Town Hall

•Construction of roads in Kiru/Bebeji—N150m

•Solar street lights—N300m

•Badaf Road Construction—N405m

•Pedestrian Bridges —N200m

•Bebeji Earth Dam—N270m

•Empowerment items—N100m

•Entrepreneurship Development Training and Vocational Centre —N100m

•Rehabilitation of Gwarzo Kiru, Kwanar Maiyaki–N180m

•Rehabilitation of Sharada-Kwanar Dogara—N1.445billion

•Construction of solar powered boreholes–N150m

•Supply of tricycles, grinding machines and set of women salon empowerment kits—N200m

•Small irrigation scheme ins in Kiru—N100m

Findings revealed that at the end of the day, Speaker Dogara managed to douse the tension by begging members to sheathe their swords.

http://thenationonlineng.net/reps-angry-dogara-jibrin-others-inject-n40b-projects-budget/

And some people were saying NASS should veto the budget. With which 2/3? The HOR will never give you a 2/3, I doubt you will even get half.

Mynd44:
And some people were saying NASS should veto the budget. With which 2/3? The HOR will never give you a 2/3, I doubt you will even get half.

My broda.... So you see wat I saw

So this is how they have been infusing monies in the past since 1999.

Thank God I voted for change.

Sai Buhari

See what some members got for their people.... My brothers in the south south and south east allowed hatred for buhari to ruin them and becloud their sense or reasoning thereby denying their people effective representation.

GudluckIBB:
So this is how they have infusing moniess in the past.
Thank God I voted gor change.

Sai Buhari

Thank God too Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

kahal29:
See what few persons got for their people.... My brothers in the south allowed hatred for buhari ruin them.

Muray bruce especially

GudluckIBB:
So this is how they have infusing monies in the past sine 1999

Thank God I voted for change.

Sai Buhari

My brother, we need to purge the National Assembly off those criminals. Imagine the level of corruption. I'm very sure Jibrin will never carry out those proposed projects, the monies allocated to various projects are going to end up in his pocket.

I can confirm to you that 25m Naira was allocated to a secondary school in my areas in 2015 budget, till this morning no single classroom has been built. Consistency project is a fraud, I'm not even sure it's captured in our constitution.

Truth is that they hardly ever execute these so-called constituency projects and instead end up chopping most of the allocated funds with impunity. Shameless Legislooters.

Yet some foolish Southerners are supporting the same Jibrin against Amaechi, claiming that the Coastal Railway was not in the original budget.

Are Jibrin' s and Dogora's project in the original budget?
Were they included in any subsequent amendment like Amaechi did for the coastal railway?
Did the relevant ministers defend those projects during the budget defence?

Lastly, did Jibrin wait for a supplementary budget before inserting his own personal projects outside the statutory allocation for constituency projects? Yet the same Jibrin is telling Amaechi and the President to wait till a new supplementary budget is raised by the executive before a critical project can be approved.

The problem with hate is that people self-destruct, thinking they are hurting their enemies. Some are determined that Buhari must not achieve anything good within their political domain, as if he was responsible for the failure of their own son on home soil.

Buhari and Amaechi may never need to use the coastal railway in their lifetime, but the supposed beneficiaries are supporting the arguments of the very person who has robbed them to make his own people happy.

Years from now, a new generation of Southern bigots would proclaim that the North allocated lots of infrastructural projects to themselves, oblivious of the self-hate that caused their own neglect.

ahswear this jibrin and his co-criminal in d senate are real time thieves

jibrin and goje are d real saboteurs and indeed d upcoming thieves being trained to succeed saraki by d economy saboteurs

rottennaija:
I'm sure when NASS survive this, they wouldn't try it again in the next budget.

How can you have to mind to say that a project wasn't in the budget but you knew it was defended, you also knew it was in error that it was left out of the budget. Then you have the mind to remove it, you also take the money to share among other project and then include your own project which wasn't on the budget.


What sort of reasoning is that? If it wasnt in the budget, why did you include your own project that wasn't captured?

That is the antithesis they are selling to the Southerners, who despite being suspicious of the North, can't help themselves from supporting the argument if it will make Amaechi and Buhari look bad.

20years from now, no one would remember the political animosity against Buhari or Amaechi, what will remain will be the infrastructure or lack of it.

front page

Wherever there are APC members in charge there must be confusion. At this rate the budget will be signed by Dec 2016.

kahal29:
See what some members got for their people.... My brothers in the south south and south east allowed hatred for buhari to ruin them and becloud their sense or reasoning.

They were just being docile. Most of them were not even aware of what happened in d house. They werw busy flexing in abuja instead of doing thier work.

GudluckIBB:
So this is how they have been infusing monies in the past since 1999.

Thank God I voted for change.

Sai Buhari

But We in the Benue South senatorial district do not see the the effects of this infusion over the years that David Mark held sway in the Senate leadership in our constituency.

In fact Otukpo one of the major town in the state which incidentally happen to be his home town is an eye sore.
I heard that our own share has been taken to Panama for his generational investment.

Funds were discovered to be "floating" in the budget. Funds under the Ministry of Transportation were then moved to other ministries to construct roads without designs,salon kits,water pumps,grinding machines,tricycles and town halls.

Instead of the southern senators to come out with one voice and order their colleagues to review the budget, they came out to scream the rail project was not originally in the budget.

I hope their eyes open on time to see the foolishness in cutting their nose to spite their face.

I doff my hat for Goje and Jubrin,the real McCoys. I'm happy the Reps have protested. I guess the Senators are too ashamed to lick their wounds and turn around to support their prodigal brother, Amaechi.

GudluckIBB:


Muray bruce especially

You mean the twitter senator? His constitutional responsibility as a Senator is to follow Saraki to Court and spew trash on twitter. I learnt that his state, Bayelsa still owes government workers 5month salary.

Were these fraudulent constituency projects in the original document? Yet they claim the rail project was not in the original document but yet amended the damn thing for their personal projects but cannot amend it to include the rail project.

Those who though the NASS were more diligent with their work over the executive have been made to look like fools.chai

Someone wil come here claiming its d apc led NASS dat is nt serious, forgeting dat it is does corrupt minded apc in d NASS ar workin wit pdp.

Smh.

Some children of HATE from SE and their partners from SS are too engrossed with Buhari and Amaechi to have enough sense to reason that the removal of the rail project from the budget was a daylight conspiracy against their region.

Thieves every where

Constituency projects are unconstitutional.

Its high time we do away with that nonsense cos those monies are always embezzled by dishonorables / sinators..

Southerners are fast losing out on this fraudulent one Nigeria and they are still sleeping whilst northerners plays tongolo with their brains.

Grazing bill is loading....thunder will fire any southerner that'll support that bill.

StOla:
Yet some foolish Southerners are supporting the same Jibrin against Amaechi, claiming that the Coastal Railway was not in the original budget.

Are Jibrin' s and Dogora's project in the original budget?
Were they included in any subsequent amendment like Amaechi did for the coastal railway?
Did the relevant ministers defend those projects during the budget defence?

Lastly, did Jibrin wait for a supplementary budget before inserting his own personal projects outside the statutory allocation for constituency projects? Yet the same Jibrin is telling Amaechi and the President to wait till a new supplementary budget is raised by the executive before a critical project can be approved.

The problem with hate is that people self-destruct, thinking they are hurting their enemies. Some are determined that Buhari must not achieve anything good within their political domain, as if he was responsible for the failure of their own son on home soil.

Buhari and Amaechi may never need to use the coastal railway in their lifetime, but the supposed beneficiaries are supporting the arguments of the very person who has robbed them to make his own people happy.

Years from now, a new generation of Southern bigots would proclaim that the North allocated lots of infrastructural projects to themselves, oblivious of the self-hate that caused their own neglect.

south south politicians are quite short sighted and sloppy with thinking.

am not from south south but i dont think those guys understand the reasons they are in NASS. i pity their people though. SMH

Lalasticlala..... Goodmorn and front page Oooo

Bad

VivianUdeogu:
You mean the twitter senator? Is constitutional responsibility as a Senator is to follow Saraki to Court and spew trash on twitter. I learnt that his state, Bayelsa still owes government workers 5month salary.

Ben Bruce is a minus to Niger delta.