The
House of Representatives has said it welcomes the request for a
public hearing on the controversial jumbo pay of its members and
senators by a former Minister of Education, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili.
Ezekwesili had stated on Monday that the National Assembly consumed over N1.1tr. since 2005.
She spoke at a dialogue on the “cost of
Governance in Nigeria”, where her comments dwelt on the controversial
jumbo pay of national lawmakers.
Twenty-four hours later, the Senate and the House reacted, accusing her of blackmail.
They also alleged that she reeled out
false figures that failed to capture other variables, including capital
projects and the cost of running the bureaucracy of the legislature,
among others.
On Wednesday, she moved a step further, challenging the National Assembly to a public hearing on the issue.
She had, said “I wish to state with
absolute respect for our lawmakers and our institution that it will be
more valuable and enriching for our democracy if instead of the abusive
language in their recent reaction, the National Assembly immediately
offer me and the rest of the Nigerian public, the opportunity of a
public hearing on their budgetary allocation and the very relevant issue
of their remuneration.
“Doing so would be consistent with
global practice across countries of the world, where emphasis is on
tenets of Open Budget to enable citizens to track to the disaggregated
level all use of public resources across every arm and level of
government.”
On Thursday, the House said it was ready for the challenge but added that the former minister had questions to answer.
A statement in Abuja by the Deputy
Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Victor
Afam-Ogene, said because the legislature believed in transparency in
governance, “the 7th House of Representatives wholeheartedly welcomes
her request for a public hearing on the stated ideals.”
However, the House noted that Ezekwesili
should be prepared to explain her understanding of cost of governance
and why she narrowed it to the National Assembly, leaving out the
Executive.
The statement observed that her comments
dwelt more on the salaries and allowances of lawmakers, excluding other
expenditure like capital projects and the cost of running the
bureaucracy of the legislative institution.
According to the House, this created the
impression that all the funds allocated to the National Assembly in
successive budgets since 2005 were spent on the payment of legislators’
wages.
The statement reads in part, “Nigerians
would remember that in the course of a similar misadventure in January
2013, Mrs. Ezekwesili had made wild claims bordering on the alleged
frittering of $45bn of the country’s external reserves, and $22bn in
the excess crude account.
“While she has yet to fully justify
those allegations, the former minister is this time seeking a fresh
sparring partner in the Legislature.
“If it were not so, why would an address
which centered on a “Cost of Governance in NIgeria” be curiously
limited to an inquest into the operations of the National Assembly,
leaving out the other two arms of government (the Executive and
Judiciary) and arriving at the rather simplistic suggestion of the
introduction of a unicameral or part-time legislature as the panacea
for all Nigeria’s problems?
“Since it is public knowledge that
whosoever wishes to go to equity ought to do so with clean hands, we
restate our earlier posers which Mrs. Ezekwesili conveniently glossed
over in her latest statement on this issue, to wit: What is the
percentage of the National Assembly’s N150bn allocation in a budget of
N4.9tr?
“Is it right to insinuate that the
budgetary allocation for the National Assembly is for ‘members salaries
and allowances’, while deliberately leaving out capital projects
component, salaries of legislative aides and the bureaucracy, as well
as allied institutions such as the Institute for Legislative Studies?
“What is the total disbursement to the Executive and the Judicial arms of government over the same eight-year period?
“For an ex-official of government, who
between the 2006 and 2007 federal budgets, superintended over a total of
N422.5bn as Education Minister, what percentage of the public fund was
expended by her as recurrent cost?”
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