There seems to be a close relationship between the 9th Senate and the Executive but, the House of Representatives member, representing Esan North East/South East Federal Constituency, Hon. Sergius Ogun, at the weekend, said that the current romance between the leadership of the ninth National Assembly and the executive will soon be over.
Hon. Ogun who was responding to questions from reporters when he featured at the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Correspondent’s Chapel Roundtable, said the Presidency has a huge appetite for disregarding the parliament.
Ogun said: “So I know very soon, this romance will be over because the executive has a huge appetite to disregard the parliament.
“I mean, if you remember what happened in the 8th Assembly that you are going to buy Tucano jets. You discussed with the American government, the American government took it to parliament to approve just to sell.
“Our own country where we need to approve the appropriation – Sections 80 to 84, of our Constitution, clearly expresses how you lay the budget, how it would be approved and how monies could be taken from government account to be spent – you went to that account and took money without the knowledge of the parliament.
“It was after spending the money before you now informed the parliament. If that happens today, I will tell you the house will still resist it. Well, for now, it looks as if it is going to be a rubber stamp, but I know the remains will be over in a very short while because there are already cracks. You heard the Senate President.
“Now the President already working with the Minister of the Niger Delta, has approved an interim board for NDDC and I think it was just yesterday, the Senate President was saying that the budget would not be approved and that they would work with only the board that has been approved by them.
“So let’s see who is going to blink first. Is the President going to call him to order and say ‘I already have a team in place you must work with that?’ So let’s see what happens. If he yields to the President’ then his reputation will be in the gutters and we are here to come out and speak on that.”
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The Edo-born legislator said Nigerians must demand from the Federal Government how it will expend the extra revenue it is going to get from the new tax regime it plans to impose on the people from the beginning of next year.
He noted that if the taxes would be used to fix the various infrastructure deficit in the country, it would be a good development “but details of such projects must be in the public domain and should not be raised in shrouded in secret to create suspicion among the population who are being taxed.”
He insisted that the people who toiled to pay taxes have the right to know how the money would be spent.
His words: “We must know clearly what they want to do with the tax let it not be like the governor’s who collected IGR and sat on it as if it were their personal money.
“People are toiling to pay these monies and at the end of the day, you are not willing to disclose how much you have collected. I think it is criminal.
“I preach rule of law, if the journalists or anyone who has the information can bring it out and anybody can go to court, we can remove that immunity and a governor should go to jail for it
“People cannot toil to pay school fees for their children, shop owners toiling to pay the tax and you as the governor put that money in your back pocket and spend it the way you like. It should not happen.
“I would have said, let us even pay the tax, but for transparency sake, we should know how the money going to be spent, after all in democracy money is meant to be spent on good roads, I hardly travel by road from Abuja to my home state of Edo.
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“A journey that is supposed to last three hours is now a whole day on a very bad road, if my little contribution from paying my tax will provide electricity, will make Nigerian universities work so that my children can school here, why not?
“We have to task them, it is not just to say pay the tax, but we as the people paying the tax have to task them to let us know the utilization, the loan they want to collect, again they should,” Hon. Ogun said.
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