All the necessary constitutional processes and rules were followed in the passage of the 2016 budget by the National Assembly, a former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Babangida Nguroje, has said.
Nguroje, who served in the 6th Assembly, said in a statement yesterday that what the National Assembly did with the budget was part of its constitutional mandate, calling on Nigerians to be patient and allow security and anti-corruption agencies to carry out thorough investigations on the matter.
“I have listened to arguments on all sides regarding budget padding allegations and I want to state unequivocally that budget is first of all, a money bill of estimates and to that extent, it requires parliamentary input in every democratic system. In making those inputs, the National Assembly can even move certain monies to other projects that are of grave concern and needed by the people. Some MDAs, after budget defence, it may become clear that they either lack capacity to utilize funds made available to them or they simply do not have need for them and in such cases, such funds are moved to areas of need,” he said.
Nguroje added that all the activities carried out by the legislature on budget were in the interest of Nigerians, saying, “it is only an issue if monies appropriated either for constituency projects or any other projects are not used for the purpose for which they were appropriated, subject to availability or release of those funds.
“This present government’s stance on corruption and sleaze is very clear and everyone knows. The economy is in bad shape and the president is working hard in collaboration with the National Assembly to give Nigerians the change they demanded and all hands must be on deck to deliver because we do not have another country than Nigeria,” he said.
