Senate ask Amaechi to resign or apologise to Nigerians over issues arising from the controversy surrounding Lagos-Calabar r

The Nigerian Senate has asked the Minister of Transport, Chibuike
Amaechi, to resign his appointment as Minister or apologize to the
Senate and Nigerians over the Lagos-Calabar rail project that has
generated a lot controversies in the last 48 hours. Members of the
National Assembly and the presidency have been at loggerheads after
media reports alleged that the National Assembly members had removed
the Lagos-Calabar rail project from the budget presented to it by
President Buhari.
The reports alleged that the National Assembly members diverted the
money meant for the said project to the Lagos-Kano project, favoring
the Northern region. Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu
Dogara and Chairman House Committee on Appropriation Abdulmumin
Jibrin, via their twitter handles refuted the claims while the
Chairman Senate Committee on Transport, Gbenga Ashafa, in a statement
he released, said although the project was not included in the
original budget forwarded to the National Assembly by Buhari, Minister
of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi approached his committee to include the
said project.
Read the senate's position on the matter below...
The Senate today (Monday, April 11) advised the Presidency to come
clean with Nigerians on the 2016 Budget and stop engaging in
surreptitious campaigns of calumny against the Senate in order to
cover up its serial errors.
Reacting to claims in the media credited to the Executive arm of
government on the 2016 budget, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, chairman,
Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, in a statement in Abuja,
said the National Assembly had bent backwards to wring a coherent
document out of the excessively flawed and chaotic versions of the
budget proposal submitted to the National Assembly.
He said : "while the executive is mandated to prepare and lay before
the National Assembly a proposed budget detailing projects to be
executed, it should be made clear that the responsibility and power of
appropriation lies with the National Assembly. If the presidency
expects us to return the budget proposal to them without any
adjustments, then some people must be living in a different era and
probably have not come to terms with democracy."
"We make bold to say however, that the said Lagos-Calabar rail project
was not included in the budget proposal presented to the National
Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari and we challenge anyone who has
any evidence to the contrary to present such to Nigerians."
Since the beginning of the 2016 budget process, it is clear that the
National Assembly has suffered all manners of falsehood, deliberate
distortion of facts, and outright blackmail, deliberately aimed at
poisoning the minds of the people against the institution of the
National Assembly. We have endured this with equanimity in the overall
interest of Nigerians. Even when the original submission was
surreptitiously swapped and we ended up having two versions of the
budget, which was almost incomprehensible and heavily padded in a
manner that betrays lack of coordination and gross incompetence, we
refused to play to the gallery and instead helped the Executive to
manage the hugely embarrassing situation it has brought upon itself;
but enough is enough."
"This latest antics of this particular minister of transportation,
Rotimi Amaechi, is reckless, uncalled for and dangerously divisive.
Apart from setting the people of the southern part of the country
against their northern compatriots, it potentially sets the people
against their lawmakers from the concerned constituencies and sets the
lawmakers against themselves. This manner of reprehensible Mischief
has no place in a democracy. We hereby demand from Mr. Amaechi a
publicly tendered apology if he is not able to show evidence that the
Lagos-Calabar road project was included in the budget. Otherwise, he
should resign forthwith.
"Finally, by the provision of Section 81 (4) (a) and (b) of the
constitution, the President is allowed to sign the budget and
kick-start the implementation of the other areas that constitute over
90 percent of the budget where there is agreement between both arms,
even as we engage ourselves to resolve the contentious areas, if
there were any. We therefore maintain that even this contrived
discrepancies are not sufficient excuse not to sign the budget into
law."
"We therefore urge President Buhari to sign the 2016 budget without
any further delay. For every additional day that the president
withholds his assent from the bill, the hardship in the land, which is
already becoming intolerable for the masses of our people gets even
more complicated. Certainly, as primary representatives of the people
we shall not vacate our responsibility and watch the people continue
to suffer unduly."
Signed
Sen. Aliyu Sabi AbdullahiChairman, Senate Committee on Media