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Your False Accusations Are Misleading – Senate Replies Obasanjo

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The Senate on Thursday deplored the allegations of corruption made by former President Olusegun Obasanjo against the National Assembly as unfortunate and an attempt to drag the institution’s name into the mud.

In a statement, Senate’s spokesman, Enyinnaya Abaribe, accused the former president of distorting facts on the issue of constituency projects by his insinuation that direct monetary advance was given to lawmakers and describing it as “promotion of corruption” by the National Assembly.

Abaribe said it was unfortunate that Obasanjo chose to accuse the lawmakers of “siphoning public funds through what they call ‘constituency projects.’”

He described the allegation as spurious and “very distant from the truth and is nowhere near reality,” arguing that the former president would not have tolerated it when he was in office if the allegation was true.

“Obasanjo, for the avoidance of doubt, was the initiator of the constituency project in the year 2000, as a means of ensuring that projects were fairly spread across the country using the senatorial zones as the spring board.

“To ensure execution of the projects, Obasanjo again factored the constituency projects into the annual budgets to be implemented by the executive depending on availability of funds. That is to say that no lawmaker ever comes close to the funds or even determines the contractor for the said projects or when the said contract would be awarded.

“So, it looks curious and surprising  that Obasanjo would turn around after over 10 years of initiating such a project to allege that the National Assembly is performing the function of both the executive and the parliament.

“Is it not preposterous for anybody to believe that members of the National Assembly would, against the provisions of the constitution with regards to application of separation of powers, award contracts ‘to their agents to execute’ and expect the Presidency under a Obasanjo or any other president for that matter to pay for what they are not part of?

“Such allegation stands logic on its head as it amounts to an indictment of the presidency for willfully contravening the budget laws by ceding its power to execute to the National Assembly, if it was the case,” the statement said.

The Senate, the statement added, challenged the former president to go a step further by furnishing Nigerians with details involving how National Assembly members became executors of national budget when in the real sense they are lawmakers.

“It will also help to clear the allegation once and for all, if any presidency official not only from the time past but currently, could come forward and explain the true position of the so-called constituency projects. Doing so would at least set the records straight,” he said.

He cautioned political leaders to be wary of the consequences of false accusation to democracy, saying dragging the institution of lawmaking to public odium in the drive to score certain political points does no one no good.

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