Senate ask Amaechi to resign or apologise to Nigerians over issues arising from the controversy surrounding Lagos-Calabar r

The Nigerian Senate has asked the Minister of Transport, Chibuike

Amaechi, to resign his appointment as Minister or apologize to the

Senate and Nigerians over the Lagos-Calabar rail project that has

generated a lot controversies in the last 48 hours. Members of the

National Assembly and the presidency have been at loggerheads after

media reports alleged that the National Assembly members had removed

the Lagos-Calabar rail project from the budget presented to it by

President Buhari.

The reports alleged that the National Assembly members diverted the

money meant for the said project to the Lagos-Kano project, favoring

the Northern region. Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu

Dogara and Chairman House Committee on Appropriation Abdulmumin

Jibrin, via their twitter handles refuted the claims while the

Chairman Senate Committee on Transport, Gbenga Ashafa, in a statement

he released, said although the project was not included in the

original budget forwarded to the National Assembly by Buhari, Minister

of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi approached his committee to include the

said project.

Read the senate's position on the matter below...

The Senate today (Monday, April 11) advised the Presidency to come

clean with Nigerians on the 2016 Budget and stop engaging in

surreptitious campaigns of calumny against the Senate in order to

cover up its serial errors.

Reacting to claims in the media credited to the Executive arm of

government on the 2016 budget, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, chairman,

Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, in a statement in Abuja,

said the National Assembly had bent backwards to wring a coherent

document out of the excessively flawed and chaotic versions of the

budget proposal submitted to the National Assembly.

He said : "while the executive is mandated to prepare and lay before

the National Assembly a proposed budget detailing projects to be

executed, it should be made clear that the responsibility and power of

appropriation lies with the National Assembly. If the presidency

expects us to return the budget proposal to them without any

adjustments, then some people must be living in a different era and

probably have not come to terms with democracy."

"We make bold to say however, that the said Lagos-Calabar rail project

was not included in the budget proposal presented to the National

Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari and we challenge anyone who has

any evidence to the contrary to present such to Nigerians."

Since the beginning of the 2016 budget process, it is clear that the

National Assembly has suffered all manners of falsehood, deliberate

distortion of facts, and outright blackmail, deliberately aimed at

poisoning the minds of the people against the institution of the

National Assembly. We have endured this with equanimity in the overall

interest of Nigerians. Even when the original submission was

surreptitiously swapped and we ended up having two versions of the

budget, which was almost incomprehensible and heavily padded in a

manner that betrays lack of coordination and gross incompetence, we

refused to play to the gallery and instead helped the Executive to

manage the hugely embarrassing situation it has brought upon itself;

but enough is enough."

"This latest antics of this particular minister of transportation,

Rotimi Amaechi, is reckless, uncalled for and dangerously divisive.

Apart from setting the people of the southern part of the country

against their northern compatriots, it potentially sets the people

against their lawmakers from the concerned constituencies and sets the

lawmakers against themselves. This manner of reprehensible Mischief

has no place in a democracy. We hereby demand from Mr. Amaechi a

publicly tendered apology if he is not able to show evidence that the

Lagos-Calabar road project was included in the budget. Otherwise, he

should resign forthwith.

"Finally, by the provision of Section 81 (4) (a) and (b) of the

constitution, the President is allowed to sign the budget and

kick-start the implementation of the other areas that constitute over

90 percent of the budget where there is agreement between both arms,

even as we engage ourselves to resolve the contentious areas, if

there were any. We therefore maintain that even this contrived

discrepancies are not sufficient excuse not to sign the budget into

law."

"We therefore urge President Buhari to sign the 2016 budget without

any further delay. For every additional day that the president

withholds his assent from the bill, the hardship in the land, which is

already becoming intolerable for the masses of our people gets even

more complicated. Certainly, as primary representatives of the people

we shall not vacate our responsibility and watch the people continue

to suffer unduly."

Signed

Sen. Aliyu Sabi AbdullahiChairman, Senate Committee on Media