The Minister
of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has expressed deep concern over
the recourse of the National Assembly’s spokespersons to name calling
over his
observations on the 2017 Budget.
In a Press
Release signed by his Special Adviser on Media, Hakeem Bello, the minister said
he was worried that the National Assembly spokespersons failed to address the
fundamental points about development-hindering whimsical cuts in the
allocations to several vital projects under the Ministry of Power, Works and
Housing as well as other ministries.
Mr. Fashola
had, in a recent interview while acknowledging that legislators could
contribute to budget making, disagreed with the practice where the legislative
arm of government unilaterally alters the budget after putting members of the
Executive through Budget Defence Sessions and Committee Hearings to the extent
that some of the projects proposed would have become materially altered.
While
acknowledging the need for legislative input from the representatives of the
people to bring forward their developmental aspirations before and during the
budget production process, the minister had observed that it amounted to a
waste of tax payers money and an unnecessary distortion of orderly planning and
development for all sections of the country, for lawmakers to unilaterally
insert items not under the Exclusive or Concurrent lists of the Constitution
like boreholes and streetlights after putting Ministries, Departments and
Agencies, MDAS, through the process of budget defence.
Specifically
with regards to the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Fashola listed
the Lagos- Ibadan Expressway, the Bodo-Bonny road, the Kano-Maiduguri road, the
Second Niger Bridge and the long drawn Mambilla Hydropower Project among others
as those that the National Assembly materially altered the allocations in
favour of scores of boreholes and primary health care centres which were never
discussed during the Ministerial Budget Defence before Parliament.
In their
responses, both the spokespersons of the Senate and the House of Representatives
accused the minister of spreading “Half-Truths” and making “Fallacious “
statements because he (Fashola) should have known that they only interfered
with projects that had concession agreements and private sector funding
components. They also accused the minister of wanting to hold on to such
projects in order that he may continue to award contracts.
However,
while dismissing the allegations in the course of an official trip outside the
country, Mr. Fashola said it was sad that the lawmakers would resort to name
calling even without understanding the facts of what they were getting into.
Taking the projects which the lawmakers chose to focus on one after the other,
the minister insisted that there is no subsisting concession agreement on the
Lagos – Ibadan Expressway adding that 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, he said.
The spokespersons admitted this much and now sought to rationalise 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, Mr. Fashola added.
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, Mr. Fashola said
that this displays very stark and worrisome gaps in knowledge of the
spokesperson about the budget process he was addressing.
According to
him, a budget is not cash. It is an approval of estimates of expenditure to be
financed by cash from the Ministry of Finance.
“The
Ministry of Finance has not yet released any cash for the Second Niger Bridge,
so no money was returned.”
“Three
phases of Early Works of piling and foundation was approved and financed by the
previous government in the hope that a concession will finally be issued, which
has not happened because concessionaires have not been able to raise finance.
“The
continuation of Early Works IV could not start in May 2016 when the budget was
passed because of high water level in the River Niger in the rainy season.
“The
contract was only approved by the Federal Executive Council in the first
quarter of 2017 and the contractor is awaiting payment.”
Dismissing
the allegation that the works mnistry under him was holding on to projects that
could be funded through Public Private Partnerships (PPP) so that he could
award contracts as a tissue of lies, the minister said from Day One of his
assumption of office, he made it clear publicly and privately that his priority
would be to finish as many of the several hundreds of projects that his
ministry inherited which had not been funded for close to three years.
According to
Mr. Fashola, if the spokesperson was in tune with the Public Procurement Law
which the National Assembly passed, he would realise that the minister has no
unilateral power to award such contracts whose values are in billions of Naira,
adding that all the new projects presented to the Federal Executive Council for
approval were either federal roads requested by state governments or those put
in the budget by the legislators to service their constituencies.
Mr. Fashola
stated that the focus on contracts by the spokesperson is probably a Freudian
slip that reveals his mindset and interests; when indeed he should be focused
on developmental projects that strengthen the economy, which is the focus of
the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan endorsed by the legislature.
Also
responding to the issues that the budget for the Mambila Power Project was
slashed because it contained a “whooping 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.
According to
him, 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, adding that 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,” Mr. Fashola said.
On the issue
of the N20 billion provision in the Ministry’s Budget which the spokesperson
alleged that the minister failed to give details of, Mr. Fashola said the
spokesperson is hiding behind a finger.
The minister
explained that it was a very basic principle of good planning to make provision
for unforeseen contingencies; adding that in the 2016 budget , a similar
provision enabled the ministry to respond to the failures of the Tamburawa
Bridge in Sokoto, the Ijora Bridge in Lagos and the Gada Hudu Bridge in Koto
Karfe along the Abuja – Lokoja Highway. Similarly, the ministry was able to pay
N1 billion to the contractor handling the Suleja to Minna road.
The recent
failures caused by flooding along Tegina-Mokwa-Jebba road and Tatabu in Niger
State could not have been provided because they were not foreseen and there may
be more. “This is what good planning is about,” Mr. Fashola said.
Noting that
the Senate spokesperson missed the point in the haste to cast aspersions on him
because he was not at the meetings he was speaking about, Mr. Fashola said he
would have expected a more sober approach to the matter.
“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 the 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 bore holes, health centres , street lights and supplying
grinding machines ,” he said.
According to
the minister, being an institutional and not a personal issue, it won’t be out
of place to seek a resolution of the conflict at the Supreme Court in order to
protect the country’s future, because it is a clear conflict about how best to
serve the people.
“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,” he said.
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