Apparently reacting to interventions by the PDP and
reported overtures by the President to save his job, the House said it
would not change its resolution midway.
“A
resolution of the House is a resolution of the House; nobody can change
it midway,” spokesman for the lawmakers, Zakari Muhammed, told The PUNCH
in Abuja.
Muhammed said the only alternative was
for Jonathan to achieve a 100 per cent budget implementation by
September in accordance with the resolution of the House.
The
lawmakers on Thursday frowned on the poor implementation of the 2012
budget and set a September 18 deadline for the Jonathan administration.
“The
budget implementation is about 35 percent,” the Chairman, Committee on
Appropriation, Mr. John Enoh, had told his colleagues. Enoh said the
committee found that only a meagre N200bn had been released to the
Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government in the first two
quarters of the year.
The House also directed the
Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to immediately release all
first and second quarter capital votes to the MDAs.
The
resolution, which was endorsed by all members, faulted the minister’s
decision to withhold the funds of some MDAs on the grounds that they
were unable to utilise their first quarter votes.
The House noted that withholding funds under any excuse was a “breach of the Appropriation Act (2012).”
The
action of the House gave rise to reported moves by the Presidency and
the leadership of the PDP at the weekend to make the lawmakers reverse
their threat.
Jonathan and the National Chairman
of the PDP, Bamangar Tukur, had reportedly reached out to the Speaker of
the House, Aminu Tambuwal, with a view to influencing the lawmakers to
soft-pedal on their threat.
But Muhammed said
while the moves were legitimate, nobody could change a stand already
taken by the legislators on the floor of the House.
“Our
practice is that our resolution, once taken, it stands; it can only be
reviewed on the floor of the House, not by an individual. A resolution
of the House is a resolution of the House; nobody can change it midway.
Not even the Speaker has the powers to change a House resolution,” the
Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, said.
He added, “What the Executive should do is to implement the budget in line with the House resolution.
“Let
us hold on to the promise of the House Leader (Mrs. Mulikat
Akande-Adeola) that things will improve in the next two months.”
Akande-Adeola, had on Thursday urged her colleagues
to wait till the expiration of the September deadline, assuring them
that she was confident that things would have improved by then.
According
to Muhammed, if funds are released to the MDAs and there is evidence
that projects are being executed, members will say so on resumption from
break on September 18.
“We have employers; they
are the people of our constituencies. If they feel the impact of the
budget, they will tell us and members will react accordingly”, he
stated.
Meanwhile, the PDP, the party to which
Jonathan and majority of members of the House belong to, has said it
will not allow the President to be impeached.
The
party said it would do everything within its powers to make sure that
the frosty relationship between the House and the President did not
degenerate into the level of impeachment.
To avoid this, the party said it had started consultations on how to make sure that the House work harmoniously with Jonathan.
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