There was a shouting match on Tuesday, November 10, 2020, among members of the House of Representatives Committee supervising the Federal Road Maintenance Agency, FERMA, during the resumed hearing of the budget defence of the agency, forcing the session to an abrupt end.
It was gathered while some members of the Committee were favourably disposed to approving the 2020 budget performance report of the agency and the 2021 estimates, others were against it, insisting on proper scrutiny of the document.
Nurudeen Rafindadi, the managing director of FERMA, had appeared before the committee when it was alleged that the agency’s budget had been mysteriously increased by N11 billion.
A member of the committee, Yusuf Gagdi (APC, Plateau) had asked the FERMA boss why the agency’s budget was suddenly increased by over N11 billion after passing through the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing and the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning.
While disowning the increase, Rafindadi had said what was proposed by FERMA for 2021 was different from what is presently before the National Assembly.
The Committee was silent on the N11 billion but it was observed while the committee invited the House Press Corps to cover the last Thursday’s session when the alleged budget padding was raised, journalists were not notified of the session on Tuesday.
However, during Tuesday sitting, a member of the Committee, Bamidele Salam (PDP, Osun) was said to have protested hurried adoption of the 2020 performance report of the agency and approval of its 2021 budget proposal, a development that did not go down well with Gagdi, who allegedly insisted the panel should go ahead with the approval.
A member of the committee, who was part of the sitting, told journalists that Salam was particularly miffed by the fact FERMA did not propose any project for Osun in the proposal for 2021.
When contacted, the Osun lawmaker confirmed protesting at the hearing over exclusion of his state from FERMA projects list, while faulting being prevented from expressing his grievances at the meeting.
Salam said: “The first thing that I noticed was that there was an attempt to rush the passage of the budget and prevent those of us who had observations from doing so.
“Immediately the FERMA MD presented the budget, a colleague was raising a motion for the adoption of the budget and I raised a point of order.
“By parliamentary procedure, a point of order should take precedence over every other matter. In the attempt to make my point of order, I saw that the person who moved the motion was behaving like the spokesperson for FERMA.
“The observation that I made was very simple: first is the fact that in the 2021 budget proposal analysis that I have before me, out of the 420 projects proposed, the South-West zone which I am from has the least allocation which is 48, and least allocation which is about N3 billion. That is just a part of it.
“The larger part of it is that the constituency that I represent, Ede-North/Ede-South/Egbedore/Ejigbo Federal Constituency, does not have a single allocation of a project out of the 420 projects.
“Even the whole of the state where I come from, Osun State, which is represented by nine members in the House, does not have a single projected allocated to it, out of a budget of N38.2 billion proposed by FERMA.
“I felt I should at least have a right of audience but the person who was preventing that from happening is from Plateau State and I can see in this same budget, Plateau is getting about 18 projects.
“Why should he not want someone who does not have anything in his own state to raise a point of order and make this observation? This is unfair, unjust and against the spirit of the Nigerian Constitution.
“That was the point I was trying to make before he came up and the whole session came into a rowdy conclusion.”
When asked if FERMA’s proposal was eventually passed by the committee, Salam said: “No. Certainly not, because if the budget would be passed, we would have to vote on the motion that was purportedly moved by him. But like I said, it ended up a rowdy session.
“The National Assembly should be tired of being called a rubberstamp Assembly. We are not; we are it supposed to be.
“If a ministry, department or agency brings in a document, we should subject that document to a thorough scrutiny. We should scrutinise it with the eye of the law, and equity, fairness, and justice.
Source: The Nation
