-Seek Saraki, Dogara’s removal
Protesters under the aegis of Citizens Action to Take Back Nigeria (CATBAN), yesterday stormed the National Assembly over alleged padding of the N9.12trillion 2018 budget by the federal legislators.
Specifically, the protesters, who came in their hundreds, denounced the federal lawmakers for increasing the sum of constituency projects in the budget to N270billionn from N100billion earlier proposed by the executive.
This, they alleged, was aside ‘inserting’ additional 6, 403 projects totalling N578billion into the budget.
Consequently, the protesters called for resignations of Senate President Bukola Saraki and his House of Representatives’ counterpart, Hon Yakubu Dogara from office for allegedly lacking the requisite credibility and moral capacity to continue in office in that capacities.
But the Senate condemned the protest and called on President Muhammadu Buhari to call sponsors to order.
In a prepared speech read on behalf of the protesters, National Convener of CATBAN, Comrade Ibrahim Wala, said the complaints made by President Buhari on the mutilation of the 2018 budget were genuine and condemned by concerned Nigerians.
He said: “Nigerians are wondering how the same members of the National Assembly who currently earn an unjustified N13.5million as monthly allowances, are still using the nation’s yearly budget as conduit pipe through all manners of padding in form of insertion of projects, jerking up of expenditure profile of the budget, and even fraudulently creating another N170billionn special projects apart from the yearly N100billion constituency projects they appropriate for themselves.
” These various degrees of padding are unacceptable to us and Nigerians generally, and hereby call on the Senate President and Speaker of House of Representatives, to immediately step down from their offices as they have shown that they lack the requisite credibility and moral capacity to remain in those positions of authority ”
But the Senate through a motion moved by Senator Barnabas Gemade (APC Benue North East), condemned the protest in its entirety, and described the protesters hired crowd.
The Senate, in its resolution after a long debate on the motion supported by all the senators, called on President Buhari to call those behind the protest to order.
It added that no amount of blackmail from paid protesters and their sponsors would make the National Assembly jettison the lofty idea behind constituency projects being the most federal character-compliant federal projects upon which equity, fairness and unity, are being promoted.
Senator Isah Hamnan Misau (APC, Bauchi Central) had during his own contribution to the debate, alleged that a serving governor and minister sponsored the protest to discredit members of the National Assembly, especially its leadership.
