Presidential comment on NASS: Buhari entitled to hold opinion -Reps

By Christiana Ekpa and Umar Muhammad Puma

The House of Representatives while reacting to President Muhammadu Buhari’s comment that for ten years some Lawmakers have done nothing as legislators, said the president can hold an opinion as regards individual members of the National Assembly.
Briefing journalists after Wednesday plenary, the Spoken man of the House Abdulrazaq Namdas said, “as for the president’s remarks, we believe that the president can hold an opinion as regards to the performance of individual members of the National Assembly.
“In fact, our constituents have been doing just that, members of the National Assembly have been replaced by their constituents as a result of such opinions.
“However, we want to believe that the president was not questioning the role
of the National Assembly as an institution of democracy, because that will be a worrying sign that our democracy will be in peril; but we believe he was not referring to that.”
Commenting on the 2018 Budget, the House spokesman in said, “We want to state again, clearly, that on the issue of budget, the 2017 budget was meant to run for
12 months. I want to tell you that we have not shortchanged anybody. If we had passed this budget earlier, I can tell you that the level of performance will not be here at the moment.
“The budget is a law, even this 2018 budget that was just passed by the national assembly, we stated clearly that it should run for 12 months. So even if we had passed the budget earlier than now, it cannot take effect until we mend that aspect of the 12 calendar months.
“We want to state that the president is commendable that in the last budget and this year. What he has put in for capital is N1.2 trillion. It is true, that is commendable but we also want to say that we will also share in the glory because the president will bring a proposal, we do the approval.
“That means both the executive and legislature are working on the same matter to see that the president succeeds.
On election re-ordering Bill, Namdas said, “Election reordering Bill will come as a bill later and will be treated differently from the one treated in the floor today (Wednesday).