Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has advised President Muhammadu Buhari to be careful and vigilant in taking decisions that would affect the country. Obasanjo, who was at the Presidential Villa, Abuja yesterday to confer with Buhari, stated that it was important to get people with integrity in right places if the country must move forward progressively.
Asked whether he was worried about the recent revelation in the National Assembly on padding of the 2016 budget, Obasanjo said: “It is not question of investigation, we should get men and women of integrity in the place and the president should be very vigilant, whatever should not pass should not pass.”
The former president stressed that he was vindicated by the revelation, which is not different from his earlier warning about corruption in the National Assembly. Obasanjo had, in January, accused the lawmakers of sustaining a culture of impunity, opaqueness and corruption.
In a letter criticising the National Assembly’s budget of N4.7 billion to purchase exotic cars for individual members, the former president described their action as insensitive because it does not reflect the current economic realities.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting with Buhari, Obasanjo noted that: “Well, if you said that I have said it in the past and if there are people who didn’t believe what I said in the past, then you now say that what has come out confirms what I said in the past, then you can say what I said in the past is what I will say now.”
The former president expressed concern over the current budget padding accusation and counteraccusation between the leadership of the House of Representatives and the former Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumin Jibrin. Jibrin, who was removed as the chairman of the committee last week, had accused the leadership of the House of padding the 2016 budget to the tune of N40 billion.
He alleged that the padding was done at a secret location with the backing of Speaker Yakubu Dogara and three principal officers including Deputy Speaker Yusuff Lasun, House Whip Alhassan Ado Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor. On the purpose of his visit to Buhari, the former Nigerian leader said: “I am visiting this time because I have some messages for the president.
Not too long ago, I was in Liberia and Gambia and I have messages these two countries will want me to deliver to the president. “Also, only yesterday I came back from Seychelles Island where I attended this year’s Annual General meeting of Africa Export Development Bank.
And there are aspects of the proceedings that I think I should update the president.” Speaking on whether he was enjoying his travel around the world, Obasanjo said “travelling is a good education, what you will learn about a country by visiting that country for two or three days, you won’t learn by reading through books.”
He made some jokes when the former leader was asked whether he intended to slow down. “May God not allow you to slow now,” Obasanjo noted. Meanwhile, The Senate has assured that there is no impeachable offence against Buhari and, as such, there is no contemplation of impeachment by the chamber.
Speaking to journalists in Abuja yesterday, Senate Majority Leader, Ali Ndume, said that it was not possible for the apex chamber to remove the president from office, going by the rigorous constitutional processes involved. He further explained that it was a wrong notion for people to be misled to believe that only the Senate could impeach a sitting president, saying that impeachment is a task that can only be collectively executed by the two arms of the National Assembly. He said that Buhari had not committed any impeachable offence that would warrant a contemplation of impeachment move against him.
Ndume also argued that since the constitution required that the president be impeached by two-thirds majority of the membership of the two chambers of the National Assembly, planning to impeach Buhari would amount to a futile effort.
His words: “The impeachment process is a National Assembly matter, not Senate. The Senate cannot impeach the president, it is the National Assembly and it is by two-thirds. It begins by clearly stating impeachable offences committed by the president, and such notice must be served on the person.
“It is a long, tedious process; and in this country we don’t even need that, we are not even contemplating on it and even if anybody contemplates on it, it is not going to work because this is All Progressives Congress (APC) Senate; we have the majority, we have 58 to 60 senators and you need 72 senators to start off impeachment process.
“Where are they going to get the 24? Let me tell you as some of them are coming into the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), so many of them, their other leg is already with us. Many of the senators will come over to the APC. That issue of impeachment, we don’t need it.
We don’t have a president that has issues of corruption, integrity, and mismanagement. We have a president that is straight forward, and he doesn’t have record of any mismanagement or abuse of due process.” On the current crisis rocking the House of Representatives in respect of the alleged padding of the 2016 budget by some members of the lower chamber, Ndume declared that the use of the word ‘padding’ was a misnomer about the National Assembly because the parliament has the constitutional power to tinker with the budget. He explained that the legislative body was empowered by the constitution to add, subtract and or swap items in the initial proposal submitted to it for approval by the executive.
Ndume blamed the members of the House for embarrassing the parliament.His words: “I don’t want to say that there was budget padding and I don’t want to talk about something I really don’t know, but what is happening in the House of Representatives is just very unfortunate because we have processes and procedures of doing things in the National Assembly. “There is nothing like budget padding. If it is the National Assembly that works on the budget; you don’t call it padding because padding is like illegality.
But when you tinker with and subtract from the document, you are simply working on the budget. “But if there are other certain abnormalities in the budget or what transpired in the budget process which is now an Appropriation Act, that’s a different thing altogether.
“I think they know the right thing to do. We have a committee on Ethics; if Jibrin is aggrieved, he can write a petition or whatever and that should be referred to Ethics and Privileges Committee who can do investigation on the issues raised. It is not good for us to embarrass ourselves and the institution over an issue that can be resolved internally.”
New Telegraph
