Joseph Erunke
Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator
Ita Enang, has said the special attention being accorded sectoral allocation in
the country’s annual budget, leaving other details in the hands of
appropriation committees of the legislature to handle and approve for
government agencies and parastatals, was responsible for padding.
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Sen. Ita-Enang
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Enang also faulted the re-drafting
of appropriation bills by the legal department of the legislature, insisting
that the avenues were giving room for padding of budgets. His position was
contained in his paper presented at Legislative Lawyers Forum, LLF, during the
just concluded 2016 Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, in Port Harcourt, Rivers
State, a copy of which was obtained by Vanguard, in Abuja. He frowned on the
manner appropriation bills of the country were considered and passed by the
National Assembly over the years by only focusing on major sectoral allocations
in the budget proposals, while leaving other sectoral allocations in the hands
of appropriation committees. He said: “There is the common practice that after
bills may have been passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives, the
legal department now re-drafts the bills, perhaps, changing certain words to
give them a presentation in a legal draftsman’s perfect legislative draft. This, in my view, is inconsistent with the provisions of the law.”
According to
him, the practice must stop, if padding of budget must be brought to end. Enang
in the paper presentation, entitled “Fresh Perspectives in Legislative
Practice: Who Makes the Law, Legislature in Session, Committees or Legislators’
Bureaucracy? posited that as practised in the current dispensation since June
1999, legislators’ bureaucracy and not legislature in session made the law by
making the final draft of such laws, before forwarding such bills already
passed by legislature in session to the President or Governor for assent
through the Clerk to the parliament.
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