Corruption Allegation: You lied, Senate hits back at Obasanjo
The Senate yesterday tackled former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo over his allegation that the National Assembly was using constituency projects to siphon public funds, saying the former president was out to denigrate the sanctity of the parliament.
The Senate also claimed that it was Obasanjo’s administration which approved that the constituency projects be built into the national budget which was executed by the executive and challenged Obasanjo to furnish Nigerians with details of how the National Assembly members became executors of the national budget, rather than being law makers.
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Chief Obasanjo had on Wednesday during a book launch in Abuja, accused the federal lawmakers of corruption. He said: “Apart from shrouding the remunerations of the National Assembly in opaqueness and without transparency, they indulge in extorting money from departments, contractors and ministries in two ways. They do so during visits to their projects and programmes and in the process of budget approval when they build up budgets for ministries and departments who agree to give it back to them in contracts that they do not execute. They do similar things during their inquiries.” Responding to Chief Obasanjo’s allegations, the Senate, speaking through the chairman of its Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, described the allegation of corruption against it by the former president as unfortunate and an attempt to tarnish the image of the National Assembly .
Chief Obasanjo had on Wednesday during a book launch in Abuja, accused the federal lawmakers of corruption. He said: “Apart from shrouding the remunerations of the National Assembly in opaqueness and without transparency, they indulge in extorting money from departments, contractors and ministries in two ways. They do so during visits to their projects and programmes and in the process of budget approval when they build up budgets for ministries and departments who agree to give it back to them in contracts that they do not execute. They do similar things during their inquiries.” Responding to Chief Obasanjo’s allegations, the Senate, speaking through the chairman of its Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, described the allegation of corruption against it by the former president as unfortunate and an attempt to tarnish the image of the National Assembly .
The Red Chamber said in the statement that it was unfortunate that the former president would distort the issue of constituency projects to mean a direct monetary advance to lawmakers and thus amounting to the “promotion of corruption” by the National Assembly.
The Senate spokesman cautioned political leaders to be wary of the consequences to our democracy of dragging the revered institution of lawmaking to public odium just to score some political point. - Source vanguard
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