BY SIMON EBEGBULEM

BENIN CITY—A member of House of Representatives, Rasaq Bello-Osagie, has lamented that poor implementation of budgets by the Federal Government in the past few years had led to the abandonment of constituency projects across the country.

He regretted that most of the completed constituency projects in his constituency were those awarded in 2011 and 2012, adding that the failure by the Federal Government to execute budgets as approved by the National Assembly had deprived ministries, departments and agencies of government of funds, which according to him would have enabled them award the contracts for the projects.

Bello-Osagie, who represents Oredo federal constituency of Edo State, at the inauguration of projects estimated at over N500million across his constituency, said “as lawmakers,  we only make laws that will guide the executive, but we try to intervene in those projects where the Federal Government cannot reach directly to our people.

We try to see how we can touch the lives of our people directly. We are commissioning street lights, boreholes, electricity projects, primary schools and so many others. I can tell you that some projects because of poor funding from the MDAs, where these projects were domiciled, they were abandoned.

“These projects were supposed to be for 2012, but due to poor funding, the completion was delayed. But by the grace of God, we have been able to complete them.

In fairness to the MDAs, it is the jaundiced nature of the budget implementation process, where the budget is performing about 35 per cent, if monies are not released to the MDA, there is no way the agency can award contracts. So, it is a general problem. All we need to do is to see how we can improve on our budgetary process in such a way that biddings are made as at when due,” he said.