We won’t make concessions on budget – Reps

THE House of Representatives on Thursday said it had decided to give President Goodluck Jonathan a February 27 date to sign the 2013 budget or risk his veto being overridden.

Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts, Mr. Solomon Olamilekan, said in Abuja on Thursday that the House would not make concessions on the budget.

The Public Accounts Committee is recognised by the 1999 Constitution.

Olamilekan said the federal lawmakers decided that if Jonathan refused to sign the 2013 appropriation by the set date, the House would take “appropriate action.”

According to him, the House decided to issue the President an ultimatum to sign the budget after a series of discussions among the lawmakers.

 He said, “February 27 is the deadline. We cannot continue to wait while the year is going and Nigerians are suffering.

“We said February 27 because that date will take care of every excuses of delay here and there.

“The President sent a budget of N4.9tn to the National Assembly and we passed a budget of N4.9tn with just a difference of N63bn.

“Let them come and tell Nigerians what their problem is. They should itemise them because there is no sub-head in the budget that has no explanations.

“There is nothing that we are going to drop from the budget; we won’t meet any of their conditions.”

Jonathan had sent a budget estimate of N4.924tn but the lawmakers returned N4.987tn for his signature.

Olamilekan, a member of the Action Congress of Nigeria, said the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was the “major stumbling block” to the signing of the budget.

He accused the minister of insisting that her ideas, and not the “collective interests of the Nigerian people expressed through their representatives,” should guide decisions of the Federal Government.

The lawmaker added, “Our only crime was that the government should fund projects that are already ongoing rather than abandoning them for new ones.

“We said, Put more money to complete the projects, they wanted to introduce new ones; that is the issue.

“We know that all over this country, projects are abandoned and we have to change the trend.”

Spokesman for the lower legislative chamber,  Zakari Mohammed, said it would be either that Jonathan sign the budget “by next week” or the House would override the President’s power.

Mohammed said, “Nigerians will be informed accordingly as developments unfold. As a legislature, we are not afraid to do what is constitutionally required.

“I am sure that the National Assembly will act appropriately.”

He however said that the Presidency and the National assembly were still discussing the budget.

The Executive also on Thursday said negotiations over the budget were still on between the President and the National Assembly.

Okonjo-Iweala said this in Abuja.

Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters, Mrs. Joy Emodi, had confirmed last week that the details of the budget were transmitted to Jonathan on January 14.

Jonathan and the leadership of the National Assembly have been meeting on the grey areas in the budget but have not reached any agreement.

Mohammed said that while overriding the President’s veto seemed attractive, the National Assembly had been applying caution in a bid to “exhaust all available means” of a peaceful resolution before overriding him.

“We are not afraid, but we have not reached there yet.

“Negotiation is still ongoing. If the President doesn’t sign by next week, because he has a right of veto, we will resort to other means to ensure that the budget is implemented,” he added.

Mohammed, who addressed a news conference on Thursday, listed four main areas of disagreement between the two sides.

He said one of the issues was the zero allocation to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which the executive wanted reversed.

Mohammed added, “The issue of rollover of the capital component of the 2012 budget to April is there. If we had agreed to mop up the money in December, it would have gone into private pockets.

“The issue of quarterly briefing by the Minister of Finance is there. We put in the Appropriation Bill that the minister should brief us quarterly on budget performance.

“If you say the budget is performing, then you have to brief us quarterly on how this is happening. Benchmark is also there.”

Commenting on the crude oil benchmark for the budget, Olamilekan stated that there was pressure on lawmakers to revert to the original $75 per barrel proposed by Jonathan.

“We won’t do that. You expect us to come back to the floor and say change $79 to $75? No.

“As we speak, the price of a barrel of crude is $116; so what is the point?

“This is a budget that came with over N1.2tn deficit. We said raise the benchmark to cut the deficit but they prefer domestic borrowing.

“If government alone borrows that much, how much will be left for the private sector to borrow and create jobs?” Olamilekan said.

Okonjo-Iweala said the talks being held on the budget were good for the country and would continue until a middle ground was reached.

 The minister said while Nigerians desired that the budget be signed as soon as possible, Jonathan also desired to sign a budget that is implementable.

She said, “Both the National Assembly and the Executive want exactly the same thing for Nigeria: to have a budget that is responding to the needs of the people and a budget that can be well implemented.

 “To that extent, we have been in very constructive dialogue with the National Assembly and it is still ongoing, trying to iron out areas of differences within the budget.

 “It is a give-and-take type of thing and at the end of the day, I think we are having a constructive engagement on the issue. Mr. President is obviously very keen that this goes well so that we can have a budget he can implement and that is where we are.

 “It is a good thing that we are talking together; we shall continue talking to see where we can make headway. Everybody wants the budget to be signed as soon as possible. We also want to sign a budget that can be implemented.”