We’ll not approve N7bn national confab budget - Sen Yar’adua
AbubakarSadiqY ar’aduarepresents Katsina Central Senatorial District on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and is the vice chairman of the senate committee on culture and tourism. In this interview, the lawmaker says there is no need for
What is your take on the national conference?
There is no need for it.
Why?
Because there is a government and there is parliament which represents every community in Nigeria. So, if there is any issue to be discussed, it should be done in the National Assembly in the two chambers. If there is any issue, it should be brought before the Senate and the House of Representatives for discussion, because in the House we have 360 members, while here in Senate we are 109 Senators.
I am not sure we have up to 470 ethnic groups in Nigeria. I know we have about 300 ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. So, why do you have to embark on a wasteful exercise? What provision has been made in the appropriation act for any money to be spent on the conference? Where will the president get the money from?
Now that he has proposed to spend N7 billion for the national conference in the budget, won’t you approve it?
We will not, I will oppose it.
Where do you then want the government to get the money to finance the conference?
Certainly, we cannot stop him
if he wants to do it, because he has ways of doing some other things since he has executive powers we cannot stop him now. But whatever will be done should be done within the confines of the law
But the president has said that anything coming out of the conference would be submitted to the National Assembly for legislation...
Why do you have to do it in the first place?
Don’t you think the parliament will be distracted when all these extraneous issues are brought before it?
Why wouldn’t he just send a request to us like he does from time to time to say these are the key issues he wants us to look at them? You can set up a committee to go round the country and collate inputs from Nigerians and come back with report so that we can make it into a law and then implement it.
You don’t have to organize a conference or spend such huge amount of money on it. We are here; he has been sending requests to us, and we have been attending to them, so why not in this case, if there is no hidden agenda?
What do you think is the hidden agenda of the president?
I don’t know, but why should he do it? I have to ask myself why he has suddenly decided to set up this committee? What is the reason behind it, what is it that he wants to achieve? Everything he wants to achieve, he can do it using the structures of government, legal structures of government. We are here to do anything and the constituent gives him the power to suggest to us what he thinks will make Nigeria better.
Are you now saying the proposed bill that would be sent to the National Assembly is dead on arrival?
No, but what I am saying is that the procedures he is following are wrong.
Meaning what?
He has the powers as enshrined in the constitution to forward to us everything that he thinks will make Nigeria better. There is nothing wrong with that. But it is wrong for him to have decided to set up this national dialogue committee when there is the parliament in place.