The Senate has denied removing the Lagos to Calabar rail line project from the 2016 budget

Reacting to a statement from the Presidency that the federal lawmakers removed some capital projects including the Lagos to Calabar rail line from this year’s budget, Chairman Senate Committee on Land Transport, Senator Gbenga Ashafa, expressed surprise about media reports that the Idu to Kaduna rail completion project was reduced by N8billion.

According to him: “While the Committee did not completely agree with all the changes made in the subsequent document, being fully aware of the critical importance of the rail sector to the development of our dear country, distinguished members of the Senate Committee on Land Transport keyed into the laudable (Lagos to Calabar, rail modernisation) project and found ways of appropriating funds for the project without exceeding the envelope provided for the ministry.

“In so doing, the committee observed that the Lagos to Kano rail rehabilitation project had been allocated the sum of N52 billion as against the sum of 60 billion which the Hon. Minister requested as counterpart funding, while no allocation whatsoever was made for the Lagos to Calabar rail line.

“Hence, the sum of N54 billion that was discovered by the Senate Committee on Land Transport to be floating in the budget of the Ministry of Transportation as presented by the Executive was injected into augmenting the funds needed for counterpart funding of both projects (Lagos to Kano and Lagos to Calabar rail modernisation), as at the time the Committee defended its report before the Senate Committee on Appropriation.

“The Lagos to Calabar rail modernisation project was therefore included in the Senate Committee on Land Transports recommendation to the Senate Committee on Appropriation.

“With regard to the Idu to Kaduna rail completion, the Senate Committee on Land Transport did not interfere with what was provided for in the budget as sent by the executive, being approximately N18 billion hence I am equally surprised to read on the pages of the newspapers that the amount allocated to the said project was reduced by N8 billion”.

But Ashafa was contradicted by Senate Spokesperson, Aliyu Sabi, who said the Lagos-Calabar rail project was not included in the budget proposal.

In a statement on Monday, Sabi, Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, declared that: “We make bold to say however, that the said Lagos-Calabar rail project was not included in the budget proposal presented to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari and we challenge anyone who has any evidence to the contrary to present such to Nigerians”.

While urging the President to sign the budget without delay, he remined the executive that “For every additional day that the President withholds his assent from the bill, the hardship in the land, which is already becoming intolerable for the masses of our people gets even more complicated”.

Reacting to claims in the media credited to the Executive arm of government on the 2016 budget, Sabi said the National Assembly had “bent backwards to wring a coherent document out of the excessively flawed and chaotic versions of the budget proposal submitted to the National Assembly”.

He therefore advised the Presidency to come clean with Nigerians on the 2016 budget and stop engaging in surreptitious campaigns of calumny against the Senate in order to cover up its serial errors.

He said: “While the Executive is mandated to prepare and lay before the National Assembly a proposed budget detailing projects to be executed, it should be made clear that the responsibility and power of appropriation lies with the National Assembly. If the presidency expects us to return the budget proposal to them without any adjustments, then some people must be living in a different era and probably have not come to terms with democracy.

“Since the beginning of the 2016 budget process, it is clear that the National Assembly has suffered all manners of falsehood, deliberate distortion of facts, and outright blackmail, deliberately aimed at poisoning the minds of the people against the institution of the National Assembly. We have endured this with equanimity in the overall interest of Nigerians. Even when the original submission was surreptitiously swapped and we ended up having two versions of the budget, which was almost incomprehensible and heavily padded in a manner that betrays lack of coordination and gross incompetence, we refused to play to the gallery and instead helped the Executive to manage the hugely embarrassing situation it has brought upon itself; but enough is enough.

“This latest antics of this particular Minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, is reckless, uncalled for and dangerously divisive. Apart from setting the people of the southern part of the country against their northern compatriots, it potentially sets the people against their lawmakers from the concerned constituencies and sets the lawmakers against themselves. This manner of reprehensible Mischief has no place in a democracy. We hereby demand from Amaechi a publicly tendered apology if he is not able to show evidence that the Lagos-Calabar road project was included in the budget. Otherwise, he should resign forthwith”.

He maintained that the discrepancies in the fiscal document were not sufficient excuse not to sign the budget into law.