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Ekweremadu seeks public hearings for national budgets

Ekweremadu seeks public hearings for national budgets

•Ekweremadu

Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu Wednesday said national budget proposals should be subjected to public hearings.

He said public scrutiny would reduce the corruption associated with the budgeting process and will improve transparency.

It will also enable the citizens make direct input on areas in need of attention, he said.

Ekweremadu spoke in Abuja on the second day of the national conference on “Role of the Legislature in the fight against Corruption”, organised by Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) and the joint Senate and House of Representatives Committee on Anti-corruption, in collaboration with the European Union, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Africa Development Studies Center.

Ekweremadu, who chaired a session, said Nigeria is perceived as a corrupt nation partly because its budgeting processes are not transparent enough.

He said: “We are one of the few countries that don’t subject our budgets to public hearings. I don’t see why Appropriation Bills should not be sent in early by the executive so that the public can contribute.

“The problem has always been that the executive brings budget proposals at the last minute, usually at the end of a financial year, leaving no room for public input,” he said.

PACAC’s Executive Secretary, Prof Bolaji Owasanoye, urged the National Assembly to make its budgets public for the sake of transparency and accountability.

He said the lawmakers should justify to Nigerians the fact that there has been over 2,220 per cent increase in National Assembly’s budget between 1999 and 2014.

Owasanoye said the number of lawmakers has not increased, nor has the salaries of other workers increased, yet their budget rose from N6.9billion in 1999 to N150billion in 2014.

According to him, National Assembly’s budget was N6.9billion in 1999, N9.9billion in 2000, N19.8billion in 2001, N21.6billion in 2002, N24.3billion in 2003, N34.7billion in 2004, N55.4billion in 2005, N60billion in 2007, N106billion in 2009 and N154.3billion in 2010.

Owasanoye accused the lawmakers of competing with the executive rather than focusing on their core mandates of lawmaking and oversight duties.

“The National Assembly, just like the judiciary, does not account to anybody for how it spends money. It’s a big problem. The arm of government to help us deal with that is the legislature.

“But for several years they’ve been collecting over N100billion, they’ve not accounted to anybody. They have to justify it to us. That is the only way to remove the negative perception that that the National Assembly is corrupt.

“On constituency projects, which I have no aversion for, in the majority of cases, unless we want to live in denial, a legislator wants to nominate or succeeds in totally hijacking the contract.

“So, the National Assembly should stop competing with the executive for budget increases,” Owasanoye said.

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