2017 BUDGET: Your gap in knowledge very worrisome, Fashola tells Senate

Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, has said that the Senate displayed very “stark and worrisome gaps in knowledge” in the way and manner its spokesperson addressed the budget process involving Lagos/Ibadan Expressway, and the 2nd Niger Bridge among other projects.

NASS had in its response to Fashola’s earlier claim that the lawmakers made huge reductions in the budget he submitted to it, claimed through its spokesperson, Senator Sabi Abdullahi, that the minister was only telling Nigerians half-truth on the budget issue in order to instigate them against the National Assembly.

Replying them in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr. Hakeem Bello, Fashola said he was worried at the stark and worrisome gap in knowledge displayed by the National Assembly spokesperson in addressing the fundamental issues relating to cut in the allocations to several projects under his ministry and other ministries.

While he acknowledge that the legislators could contribute to budget making, Fashola however argued that they had no right to singly adjust the budget after members of the executive had defended the budget at a National Assembly sessions and committee hearings.

Explaining some of the issues, Fashola said, “Taking the projects, which the lawmakers chose to focus on one after the other, there is no subsisting concession agreement on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. What the Infrastructure Construction Regulatory Commission, ICRC, has is a financing agreement from a consortium of banks, which is like a loan that still has to be paid back through budgetary provisions.

“There is no fallacy or half-truth in the allegation that the budgets were reduced. The spokespersons admitted this much and now sought to rationalize it by a concession or financing arrangement that has failed to build the road since 2006. The biggest momentum seen on the road was in 2016.

“In the case of the Second Niger Bridge, where one of the spokespersons alleged that the provision in 2016 budget was not spent and had to be returned, this displays very stark and worrisome gaps in knowledge of the spokesperson about the budget process he was addressing.”

Fashola went further to say that a budget is not cash but an approval of estimates of expenditure to be financed by cash from the Ministry of Finance.

On the issues that the budget for the Mambila Power Project was slashed because it contained a “whopping N17 billion” for Environmental Impact Assessment, EIA, the minister said there was, indeed, a mis-description of that particular Expenditure Head which could have happened during the classification of so many thousands of budget heads in the Budget estimates.

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He said that what was described as a Budget Head for EIA was actually the nation’s counterpart funding to the China- EXIM loan to fund the building of the Mambila Project.

According to him, this was brought to his attention only after it had been slashed and that if the intention was not to slash arbitrarily, it should have been brought to his attention to explain.

“At a joint meeting convened at the instance of the Budget Minister when I complained that the budget was slashed, the issue of EIA was brought to my attention and I explained what it was meant for,” he said.

Speaking further he said, “In any event, allegations of half-truth is only a flawed response to the constitutional and developmental issues that have plagued Nigeria from 1999 about how to budget for critical infrastructure in Nigeria.

“It shows the conflict between the Executive that wants to build big federal highways; bridges ; power plants; rail; and dams on one hand and Parliament that wants to do small things like boreholes , health centres, street lights and supplying grinding machines.

“As long as budgets planned to deliver life changing infrastructure are cut into small pieces, Nigeria will continue to have small projects that are not life changing, and big projects that have not been completed in 17 years.

‘’If a project would cost N15 billion and the contractor gets only a fraction of that, then things won’t move. Success should be defined by how many projects an administration is able to complete or set on the path of irreversible completion and not how many poorly funded contracts are awarded.”

 

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