Reps member cautions against impeaching Yar’Adua

ABUJA — The Deputy Chairman House of Representatives committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes Mr. Bassey Etim has cautioned against the impeachment of President Umaru Yar’Adua by the National assembly, saying doing so would still not lead to full implementa-tion of the 2009 Appropria-tion Act.

Etim, however, said that the inability of the executive arm of government to fully execute the 2009 Appropria-tion Act is due to corruption in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) of Government.

It could be recalled that the House of Representatives had, penultimate week, accused President Yar’Adua of deliberately refusing to implement the 2009 budget fully, saying it would move for his removal if he keeps breaching the Act.

“President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s sudden decision to stop the award of capital projects provided for in the 2009 budget by June was a testimony of corruption by some of his ministers and other officials vested with that responsibility,” he said.

Etim, who made these observations at a meeting of members of his committee in Abuja over the weekend , said the House of Reps was on its own helping the fight against corruption by trying to establish the Cyber Security Commission which would  regulate the use of internet for online fraud that has helped in denting Nigeria’s image in the world.

According to him, “The removal of president Yar’Adua may not be a solution to the poor implementation of the yearly budgets. But he cannot be everywhere all the time, what we need to do is to compel him to sack any of his ministers who has reneged on full implementation of his budget, since it has been proved that lack of funds is not the problem.

“The 2009 budget was predicated on $45 the price of crude oil  at a production of 2.25 million barrels per day. Though the production output has droped significantly, the price of crude oil is well over $60 per barrel since April.

“Besides, the value of the dollar had dropped to about N146  to a dollar, from its peak N128, meaning that government is making enough money to cover  the N1trillion  deficit put in the  2009 Appropriation Act.

“As long as Yar’Adua does not check the issue of corruption in his cabinet, some of its members  would fail to execute projects which  they cannot corruptly benefit”, he said.