…rules out pardon for 11 suspended members

By Tordue Salem

ABUJA—The House of Representatives yesterday attributed the dismal performance of budgets in Nigeria since 1999 and the attendant underdevelopment of the country to bureaucratic bottlenecks in the executive arm of government.

Besides, the House has declared that there will be no pardon for the 11 suspended members of the Green Chamber who it described as “unremorseful”

The spokesman of the Green Chamber, Rep. Eseme Eyiboh, who gave a briefing to mark the three years of Dimeji Bankole as speaker, said but for “bureaucracy in the executive”, the thorough oversight of ministries and agencies of government by the House of Representatives would have yielded substantial development in the country.

“As you well know, the House of Representatives has done its own part by recovering billions of naira for the country through the input-output-outcome principle, but if after three years of our stewardship, budgets are yet to be implemented, it is the executive that is to blame, not the House of Representatives or the National Assembly.

“Yes, there is no doubt that the speaker has promised to provide a citizens’ budget. And he has done it through the input-output-outcome principle of budgeting, which has ensured that all the budgets passed are followed up, but unfortunately the bureaucracy in the executive has stood in the way of development in the last three years,” he claimed..

The House spokesman, in his assessment of Bankole’s three years in office, said the country was almost becoming a pariah by global fiscal standards until the emergence of Bankole on November 1, 2007.

“This country was almost becoming an abandoned project until the principle of input-output-outcome was put in place by Dimeji Bankole when he became speaker three years ago.

“Before Bankole, public officials were lining their pockets with public funds without accountability,” he said.

Eyibo in a question and answer session, however, said the three-year celebrations of the achievements of the House would not include giving ‘amnesty’ to 11 of its members who were suspended three months ago for allegedly “disrupting the proceedings of the House”.

About nine of the lawmakers are still in Court, while about two others are reported to have withdrawn their cases in search of pardon from the House leadership.

But Rep. Eyiboh, who described the members as “unremorseful”, said “You cannot give amnesty to a man who has not laid down his arms”.