The house of representatives says
President Muhammadu Buhari can have an opinion of members of the national assembly
but he cannot question the role of the parliament.
Abdulrazak Namdas, spokesman of
the house of reps, said this in response to Buhari’s comment while hosting some
of his supporters at Aso Rock on Tuesday.
“What have they (federal
lawmakers) been doing? Some of them have been there for 10 years. What have
they been doing?” Buhari had asked.
But speaking with journalists on
Wednesday, Namdas said questioning the role of the national assembly would
jeopardise democracy.
“We believe that the president
can hold an opinion as regards to the performance of individual members of the
national assembly,” the spokesman said.
“In fact, our constituents have
been doing just that, members of the national assembly have been replaced by
their constituents as a result of such opinions.
“However, we want to believe that
the president was not questioning the role of the national assembly as an
institution of democracy because that will be a worrying sign. Our democracy
will be in peril if he does that, but we believe he was not referring to that.”
He said it is true that Buhari
proposed N1.2 trillion for capital projects in the 2017 and 2018 budgets but
lawmakers would also “share in the glory”.
“We want to state that the
president is commendable that in the last budget and this year. What he has put
in for capital is N1.2 trillion. It is true, that is commendable but we also
want to say that we will also share in the glory because the president brings
the proposal while we do the approval,” he said.
“That means both the executive
and legislature are working on the same matter to see that the president
succeeds.
“We want to state again clearly
that on the issue of budget, the 2017 budget was meant to run for 12 months. I
want to tell you that we have not shortchanged anybody. If we had passed this
budget earlier, I can tell that the level of performance will not be here at
the moment.
“The budget is a law, even this
2018 budget that was just passed by the national assembly, we stated clearly
that it should run for 12 months. So even if we had passed the budget earlier
than now, it cannot take effect until we mend that aspect of of the 12 calendar
months.”
Namdas added that the change of
the sequence of election would be reintroduced as a separate bill.
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