Obasanjo's corruption allegation against lawmakers spurious - senate
Posted by admin | 9 years ago | 2,865 times
The senators have described as spurious and unfortunate the corruption allegation levelled against the members of the National Assembly by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The former president had on Wednesday November 26,alleged that the lawmakers collects money directly from the executive to execute phantom projects,hence,its compromise in the corrupt practices of the present administration.
According to the Chairman,Senate Committee on Media and Publicity,Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe,the statement by the former president was deliberately to denigrate the institution.
The senate described as unfortunate the fact that the former president would describe funds for constituency projects as meaning a direct monetary advance to lawmakers thus amounting to the "promotion of corruption" by the lawmakers.
"The allegation as spurious as it were" the statement added "is very distant from the truth and nowhere near reality",adding that if it were so "the former president would not have tolerated that for the period he was president of the country".
The statement reads in part " president Obasanjo for the avoidance of doubt, was the initiator of the constituency projects in 2000 as a means of ensuring that projects were fairly spread across the country using the senatorial zones as a spring board.
The senate however,challenged the former president to go a step further to furnish Nigerians on how the National Assembly members became executors of national budget rather being law makers.
"It will also help to clear the allegations 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 record straight". It added.
The red chamber, 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 points".
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