‘Reps won’t overrule President on 2011 Budget Bill’

THE House of Representatives said yesterday that it had no reason to reconsider the N4.9 trillion 2011 Budget Bill which it passed and sent to President Goodluck Jonathan last March.

Senate panel welcomes court verdict on NSE leadership

New group vows to upturn Senate rule on principal officers

THE House of Representatives said yesterday that it had no reason to reconsider the N4.9 trillion 2011 Budget Bill which it passed and sent to President Goodluck Jonathan last March.

The lower legislative chamber’s Committee on Rules and Business, which said this yesterday at the National Assembly, also ruled out the possibility of overruling Jonathan on the Appropriation Bill, saying that the constitution empowered the President to study the Budget Bill sent to him by the National Assembly before assenting to it.

Chairman of the Committee, Ita Enang, in an interview yesterday in Abuja stated that it was not true that the President had refused to assent to the Budget Bill as passed by the National Assembly.

He said there was no plan by the House to re-consider the 2011 Budget Bill with a view to slashing it because no steps had been taken by the President against it to warrant any review.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Capital Market, Ganiyu Olanrewaju Solomon, yesterday described as a vindication of his committee’s position, last Friday’s Federal High Court ruling which ordered a reinstatement of former Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Prof. Ndi Okereke-Onyuike who was sacked on August 5 last year by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) over allegations of misconducts.

Solomon however canvassed a total overhaul of SEC and said the leadership’s activities in the last 18 months have been nothing but irrational and warned that except the Presidency quickly wades in, it might further plunge the nation into a very serious financial crisis.

The senator, representing Lagos West Senatorial District, said he was particularly not surprised at the ruling delivered last Friday by Justice Muhammed Idris of the Federal High Court, Ikoyi, because no court of sound competence would “uphold illegality and trample on due process which is the strength of any institutional reform.”

And as controversy continues to greet the Senate Rule, which bars new comers from holding leadership at the upper legislative chamber, a newly-formed political pressure group, the National Progressives (NP), has vowed to upturn the ambition of those behind the new rule.

In a press statement at the end of its meeting in Abuja, the group argued that the new Senate Rule which aims at preventing incoming members of the upper legislative chambers from vying for the Senate’s principal offices, is not only undemocratic and unconstitutional, but that ‘’such an outcome will amount to total demerit, as well as a subversive miscarriage and travesty of justice, adding that the country’s democratic system will be degraded and reduced to “a one stock shop’’.

The statement, which was signed by Rev. Onwubuya Breadforth and Alhaji Hamza Abdulahi, as National Co-ordinator and Deputy National Co-ordinator respectively, added that the rule, if allowed to sail through, “will ultimately prevent fresh breath of ideas into governance as against the promises made by President Goodluck Jonathan in his campaign manifestos’’.

The group argued that “all senators-elect will be of equal status (as senators-elect) on the day of proclamation of the 7th Senate’’.

On the budget, Enang said:  “I am not aware of the President returning the 2011 Budget but on what the House will do tomorrow and within the week, the notice paper has been published and there is nothing like discussion on the budget. So, I’m not aware of the President returning the budget at all.

The question of the President withholding his assent or not has not arisen because that could only be determined by the number of days the budget was sent to the President. The President under the constitution has 30 days within which to sign. The President is not expected by the constitution to be a robot by just appending his signature immediately a document is presented to him. The constitution and the law allows him 30 days within which to read the document, form opinion before appending his signature.”

He ruled out the question of the National Assembly overruling the President saying: “As of today, I am of the opinion that the President is still within the time allows by the constitution to sign the budget or withhold assent. If the President withholds his assent, the Constitution has stated what is to be done and I cannot express an opinion different from what the Constitution has stated.

But I am optimistic that it will not get to a stage in a PDP government where the President will openly withhold his assent to a budget of the country because we are all working under the party.   Of course the President is a very sensitive person who will not ordinarily withhold assent. So, there is not going to be any budget crisis because we are working under one government, one party.”

Justifying the additional figures the National Assembly injected into the budget, the Rules and Business Committee chairman explained: “Anytime the President sends a budget to the National Assembly, the budget is a proposal and it is what the National Assembly passed that is the budget. It is not what the President sends to the National Assembly. The President can simply present an empty frame-work and lay it on the table as a budget of the nation stating the amount that he expects. It is the National Assembly that assigns based on the needs of the nation. The job of the Legislature is to look at the budget and pass it as thought fit. The budget figure that goes to the Legislature never comes back the same. The figure must definitely be different either higher or lower.”

Jonathan had last December presented a budget proposal of N4.226 trillion to the joint session of the National Assembly based on a benchmark of $65 per barrel, an expected crude oil production of 2.3 million barrels per day and an exchange rate of N150 to a dollar.

But in passing the Appropriation Bill, the lawmakers raised the figure by N745 billion from N4.226 trillion to N4.971 trillion. The benchmark was increased from $65 to $75 per barrel of crude oil.

On the NSE issue, Solomon said: “Not only was Justice Idris straight to the point in delivering his judgment, his choice words, I believe, were carefully selected and were just in tune with our description of the highhanded and irrational dispositions of the leadership that SEC represented in the last 18 months. Whatever their reservations about the former DG, it does not justify the fact that her removal was in clear contravention of the rules guiding the operations of SEC,” he said.

Even worrisome, Solomon said, is the fact that SEC had been indicted about three to four times by different courts on similar grounds of contravening its own rules.

“If as a regulator you are being indicted at such frequency for alleged regulatory conventions, it simply calls to question your capacity and competence to regulate the market.”

The senator therefore called on the Federal Government to see the development as a wake-up call with a view to forestalling pending danger. He said events of the last one and half years of the SEC leadership have shown that except something drastic is done to curb its excesses, the country must be ready to pay for such negligence, either now or in the nearest future.

“I think the time is now to completely overhaul SEC. It is long overdue and the initiative must be total. The Federal Government must be challenged to initiate the much-needed change in that critical sector of our system. Government cannot claim not to notice the defects, the illegality and irrationality that often characterise the actions of the SEC leadership. Besides, the consequence would not be peculiar to SEC alone but the economy as a whole, hence the need for the overhaul which is as critical as it is compelling,” he said.

He expressed optimism that a better-run SEC would spur a viable economy and stabilise the market. He said there are investors and stakeholders in the system who share his positions but are unable to express them. “But we will not relent.

It’s a collective struggle and we will not abandon it midway,” he added.

The new Senate group, which noted in the statement that all businesses of the upper chamber according to Section 46 (1) of the 1999 amended constitution finishes at the expiration of that Senate, wondered why incoming senators should not be allowed to add their own experience from the leadership cadre of the Senate, adding that most of the new senators have gathered enormous experience in leadership and administration having served in so many capacities as either ministers, governors or House of Representatives members in the past.

The new group also said that it had resolved to mobilise the senators-elect to reject the rule and “subsequently suspend the rule on resumption at the proclamation of the 7th Senate.  It also threatened to seek immediate legal actions to seek redress to the new rule, which it described as ‘’ an undemocratic situation’’.