By Bartholomew Madukwe

Worries over recourse to name calling
Insists no concession agreement on
Lagos-Ibadan Rd, 2nd Niger Bridge
ABUJA—Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, yesterday, expressed deep concern over the recourse of National Assembly’s spokesperson to name calling over his observations on the 2017 budget.

Fashola in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr Hakeem Bello, said he was worried that the National Assembly scribes failed to address the fundamental issues relating to cut in the allocations to several projects under his ministry and other ministries.

Fasahola

NASS had, through Senate’s spokesperson, Senator Sabi Abdullahi, accused the minister of attempting to instigate Nigerians against them by raising an alarm over cuts in allocations to his ministry and others.

But Fashola, yesterday, noted that though legislators could contribute to budget making, they had no right to unilaterally alter the budget after putting members of the executive through budget defence sessions and committee hearings, to the extent that some of the projects proposed would have become materially altered.

While acknowledging the need for legislative input from representatives of the people to bring forward their developmental aspirations before and during the budget production process, the minister said it amounted to a waste of tax payers money and an unnecessary distortion of orderly planning and development for all sections of the country, for lawmakers to unilaterally insert items not under the exclusive or concurrent lists of the constitution, such as boreholes and streetlights.

He listed Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Bodo-Bonny road, Kano-Maiduguri road, Second Niger Bridge and long drawn Mambilla  Hydropower Project, among others, as those the National Assembly materially altered allocations in favour of scores of boreholes and primary health care centres, which were never discussed during ministerial budget defence before the National Assembly.

No concession agreement on  Lagos-Ibadan Rd, 2nd Niger Bridge

Fashola said it was sad that the lawmakers would resort to name calling, even without understanding the facts of what they were getting into.

He said: “Taking the projects, which the lawmakers chose to focus on one after the other, there is no subsisting concession agreement on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

“What the Infrastructure Construction Regulatory Commission, ICRC, has is a financing agreement from a consortium of banks, which is like a loan that still has to be paid back through budgetary provisions.

“There is no fallacy or half truth in the allegation that the budgets were reduced. The spokespersons admitted this much and now sought to rationalize it by a concession or financing arrangement that has failed to build the road since 2006. The biggest momentum seen on the road was in 2016.

“In the case of the Second Niger Bridge, where one of the spokespersons alleged that the provision in 2016 budget was not spent and had to be returned, this displays very stark and worrisome gaps in knowledge of the spokesperson about the budget process he was addressing.”

According to him, a budget is not cash; it is an approval of estimates of expenditure to be financed by cash from the Ministry of Finance.

On Mambila Power Project

Also responding to the issues that the Budget for the Mambila Power Project was slashed because it contained a “whopping N17 billion” for Environmental Impact Assessment, EIA,, the minister said there was, indeed, a mis-description of that particular Expenditure Head which could have happened during the classification of so many thousands of budget heads in the Budget estimates.

According to him, what was described as a Budget Head for EIA was actually the nation’s counterpart funding to the China- EXIM loan to fund the building of the Mambila Project.

He said this was brought to his attention only after it had been slashed and that   if the intention was not to slash arbitrarily, it should have been brought to his attention to explain.

“At a joint meeting convened at the instance of the Budget Minister when I complained that the budget was slashed, the issue of EIA was brought to my attention and I explained what it was meant for,” Fashola said.

On the issue of the N20 billion provision in the Ministry’s budget which the spokesperson alleged that the Minister failed to give details of, Fashola said the spokesperson was hiding behind a finger, explaining that it was a very basic principle of good planning to make provision for unforeseen contigencies.

Noting that the Senate spokesperson missed the point in the haste to cast aspersions on him because he was not at the meetings he was speaking about, Fashola said he would have expected a more sober approach to the matter.

“ In any event, allegations of half truth is only a flawed response to the constitutional and developmental issues that have plagued Nigeria from 1999 about how to budget for critical infrastructure in Nigeria.

‘’It shows the conflict between the Executive that wants to build big federal highways; bridges ; power plants; rail; and dams on one hand and Parliament that wants to do small things like boreholes , health centres , street lights and supplying grinding machines.

“ As long as budgets planned to deliver life changing infrastructure are cut into small pieces, Nigeria will continue to have small projects that are not life changing , and big projects that have not been completed in 17 years .

‘’If a project would cost N15 billion and the contractor gets only a fraction of that, then things won’t move. Success should be defined by how many projects an administration is able to complete or set on the path of irreversible completion and not how many poorly funded contracts are awarded,” he said.