The Senate has asked the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, to apologise if he fails to prove that the Lagos-Calabar road project was included in the 2016 budget.
Otherwise, Mr. Amaechi should should resign forthwith, the senate said in a statement Monday.
The Senate advised the Presidency to come clean with Nigerians on the 2016 Budget and stop engaging in surreptitious campaigns of calumny against the upper legislative chamber, to cover up its serial errors.
Reacting to reports in the media credited to the executive arm of government, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, said in a statement that 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.
“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,” the statement said.
“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.”