Friday, August 23, 2013

N1 Trillion NASS Wage Bill: Reps Accept Ezekwesili’s Challenge For Public Debate

The challenge thrown by former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili to the House of Representatives for a public debate on the National Assembly's huge budget and its members' earnings, was Thursday "wholeheartedly" welcomed by the lower chambers.


A spokesperson said the house will however request that Mrs. Ezekwesili complies with "basic ground rules" to avoid a situation where the house would be "fooled".
"On the basis of this shared vision, the 7th House of Representatives wholeheartedly welcome her request for a public hearing on the stated ideals," deputy chairman House committee on media, Victor Ogene, said in a statement.

"In doing so, however, the former minister must be ready to comply with some basic ground rules so that we may all not be fooled by the guerrilla tactics of someone plagued by an out-of- office syndrome."
The statement urged the former minister to get set to explain her understanding of cost of governance and why she narrowed that to the National Assembly, leaving out the Executive.

The house, currently on break, however did not give a date for a hearing.

The reaction comes on the heels of Mrs. Ezekwesili remarks on Monday highlighting Nigeria's largely ineffective budget, which, amongst others, appropriated N1 trillion to the National Assembly in eight years alone.

In earlier reactions, lawmakers accused the former World Bank Vice President (Africa) of making blanket statements and urged her to go to the specifics of her claims.

They further accused her of failing to highlight budget accruals, for the same period to the executive arm of government, which she once served.
Mrs. Ezekwesili, it would be recalled was first appointed Minister of Solid Minerals in 2005, under former President Olusegun Obasanjo's administration before she was later moved to the Education Ministry.
In her reaction on Wednesday, Mrs. Ezekwesili decried the non-response of the legislators to the issues she raised and challenged them to a public hearing where she would defend her position on the remuneration of the lawmakers, and her call for a part time legislature.


However, Mr. Ogene said in a statement Thursday the call amounted to a crave by the former minister to "get back into national consciousness, simply by randomly throwing pot shots anchored on misplaced aggression, in the ardent hope that such mudslinging would elevate her to the status of a moral crusader".

"As an institution, we ought not to be responding to the tirades of Mrs. Ezekwesili, especially as they are anchored on wrong deployment of figures, weird generalizations and outright falsehood," the statement said.

"As elected representatives, we owe it a duty to the Nigerian people to always seek to conduct our affairs in an atmosphere of openness, candor and a fidelity to the truth.

"Indeed, if there is any point we are agreed upon with Mrs. Ezekwesili, or anyone else for that matter, it is the promotion of transparency in governance and ensuring that democratic institutions of state, function optimally for the benefit of all."

The statement recalled Mrs. Ezekwesili's earlier claim in January that the Obasanjo administration, which she was a member, left $45bn in Nigeria's external reserves and another $22bn in the excess crude account-funds she said was squandered by the Yar'adua and Jonathan administrations.

"While she has yet to fully justify those allegations, the former minister is this time seeking a fresh sparring partner in the legislature", the statement noted.

"Is it right to insinuate that the budgetary allocation for the National Assembly is for members' salaries and allowances, while deliberately leaving out capital projects component, salaries of legislative aides and the bureaucracy, as well as allied institutions such as the Institute for Legislative Studies?" the statement asked.

"What is the total disbursement to the executive and the judicial arms of government over the same eight-year period?

"For an ex-official of government, who between the 2006 and 2007 federal budgets, superintended over a total of N422.5bn as Education Minister, what percentage of the public fund was expended by her as recurrent cost?"

No comments:

Post a Comment