The House of Representatives on Thursday denied that its insistence on an $80 crude oil
benchmark for the 2013 budget was a ploy to get some financial favours
from the Executive. It alleged that the lawmakers were being
blackmailed.
The denial is an indication that the disagreement between the two arms of government on the appropriate oil price benchmark for the budget is far from being settled.
While the executive has pegged the benchmark of the proposed N4.9trn budget at $75 per barrel of crude, the House insists on $80. Both sides claim to be protecting the interest of Nigerians.
However, the Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public
Affairs, Mr. Zakari Mohammed, responded to allegations that the
lawmakers were using the $80 as a bargain to get personal financial
favours from the executive.
Mohammed, who spoke to journalists in Abuja, said the allegation must have been “engineered to blackmail and cow members.”
He said the House challenged anyone with proof of the alleged demand for money to tender it publicly.
He said, “We have not asked anybody for money. This is pure blackmail and no amount of blackmail can cow us from insisting on $80. If you have proof that XYZ asked for money, come and show it.
“It is not everybody that money can buy and in this 7th Assembly, blackmail cannot stop us from working. This idea that lawmakers are asking for money; we say come and prove it.”
He explained that the reason the House insisted on $80 was for government to use the extra $5 to finance the budget deficit of over N1.3tn and to cut domestic borrowing.
“The $80 is not for us members of the House. It is to tackle our deficit; domestic debt has been overtaken by public borrowing,” he stated.
A senior government official at the Ministry of Finance at a meeting with the House Committee on Loans/Debts,
on Tuesday, had argued that benchmark was a technical and professional
issue, which would be best handled by the executive.
The official suggested a ‘professional and expert committee on benchmark’ to fix crude oil benchmark for the country, thereby stopping politicians from “politicising” it.
But, Mohammed faulted the official opinion that only the executive had professionals and experts knowledgeable in economic management.
“We have professionals, chartered accountants, economists and well-trained people in this House.
“We have people of better standing than those who
think that they have the monopoly of knowledge in governance,” the
spokesman noted.
He disclosed that a major component was missing from
the 2013 budget, adding that it took the expertise of lawmakers to
discover it.
“This budget does not capture the grants the
developed countries give to developing countries yearly. It is not there
in the budget.
“Let us stop playing money games with one another.
This is our country and we are equal stakeholders. People should not
continue telling us that we in the National Assembly, that we don’t know
what we are doing”, he said.
However, Mohammed said that the House would not delay the passage of the budget.
“We are working on the budget; it is already before
the Committee on Appropriation. The only point we want to make is that
we won’t serve as a garbage in, garbage out House”, he added.
The Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Mr. Solomon Adeola, who also spoke with journalists, said that his committee had completed work on the accounts of over 60 agencies indicted by the reports of the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation.
“We have a 1,200-page report of more than 700 recommendations. A
particular agency had over 120 queries from 2003 to 2006. We will soon
lay our report before the House,” he assured.
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