S/East zone got least allocation from 2017 budget – Senator Abaribe

Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe (Abia North), Chairman Senate Committee on Power, Chairman S/East Senators Caucus and former Deputy Governor of Abia State in this interactive with IGNATIUS OKOROCHA, expresses serious concerns with the paltry allocation proposed for the provision of infrastructure in the S/East geopolitical zone. He also spoke on efforts by the Caucus to secure the release of the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, and the Ojukwu Bunker among others. Excerpts:

As we go into budget defense, could you tell us what is the allo­cation of the South East geopoliti­cal zone in the 2017 budget?

Well, from what we have seen it looks like the South East geopolitical zone is getting the least amount of money in the key infrastructural areas es­pecially for roads, for power and so forth but what we are doing is that as we are going into the debate and after the debate the budget is going to be subjected to work by the National Assembly. Whatever comes from the presidency as a budget is not yet a budget until the job is finished and if the Na­tional Assembly in its wisdom decides to rearrange what has been put there to make sure that people don’t feel left out, we will make sure that infrastructural gap in certain areas are properly dealt with in terms of fairness for each zone. It is only at that time that we can now say that the budget is a finished product. So, where it is today is still a proposal that we are going to definitely resolve any pending issues within the budget.

How much specifically was allo­cated to the South East geopoliti­cal zone?

Well, I don’t know, I will not have to quote a figure off my head which may not really be very ethical at this point. We got the budget document and we have it and we are at the moment doing all our own specific analysis and in the next few days when we do, then I am sure you will get the percentage because it is still like I said a proposal.

Bearing in mind the glaring de­gree of infrastructural decay in the South East geopolitical zone, would you think that the reason for giving the Zone the least al­location could be traceable to the pattern of voting during the 2015 election?

Well, if I posit anything along that line, it would be going in the realm of speculation. I do not know the reason why provisions made in the budget are made to disfavour the South East zone. May be somebody outside may say okay maybe it is 95 % is or 5%. But then, I do not think gov­ernment is run that way. I have a feeling that there are people from the South East in this government who participated in the making of this budget.

In fact the Director of Budget is today an Igbo man. So, I will not agree totally in that specula­tion. Let’s just say that sometimes bureaucrats who prepare all these things do certain stuffs that you cannot really explain. You have to ask them for them to give their reasons and we on this side, if we receive the document we should not want to put words in their mouth.

We recall that in the year 2016, National Assembly tried to carry out some adjustment in the fig­ures that were contained in the Appropriation Bill and later the Executive accused the legislature of padding the budget. Don’t you think history would repeat itself if you add or subtract the original figures contained in the present budget?

Well, the unfortunate thing that happened last year – I don’t think it will happen again. The unfortu­nate thing that happened last year was that a single individual muti­lated the budget behind peoples back because the process is fairly straight-forward. Each committee of the National Assembly meets with the government ministry, Department or Agency that it oversights and goes through the process of working and sorting out the budget matter and when after doing that, the committee chairmen would now go to defend this in front of the Appropriation Committee. Once the Appro­priation Committee obtains this document that comes from the committee, the Appropriation Committee acts like a collection centre. It is not supposed to now go ahead to tamper with the sub­missions of the already made fig­ures by different committees be­cause the committees have criteria for which they have been given to work. Now if you recall what hap­pened last year there were delays, there were issues of whether it was the proper budget or it was taken back and in the midst of all that confusion after the committees have done their work, the Appro­priation Committees were where the problems now emanated from and most of the members didn’t know what happened until the fi­nal budget now came out. And it was when the final budget came out that we now found that mon­ies were arbitrarily moved. So the individual from the House of Representatives who continued to shout Budget Padding actually was a perpetrator of this invidious act and I am saying that because of this process everybody has seen what happened, and everybody now says, even when we submit to the Appropriation Commit­tee, the Committee would have to bring back that budget for ev­ery member and every committee to now see what is in the budget with regard to its own committee so that we will no longer have the problem of budget padding.

Are you not worried that out of the fifteen seats that are supposed to be occupied by Senators from the South East geopolitical zone one has been left vacant for al­most over six months now – the Anambra Central Senatorial District seat. What is your caucus doing to fill that seat?

Well, we are worried about it and the matter had come up in the debate and it actually come up when we debated the run elec­tion in Rivers Senatorial districts and when we took a resolution on it. I think from my interac­tion with the INEC committee it seems there are still some pending litigations on that seat and INEC intends to be sure that the litiga­tions are over before it conducts an election there. We hope that there would be a resolution on that matter in the shortest time.

Recently we learnt that the N5000 Federal government largess for the poorest of the poor which is meant for the 36 states of the federation and Abuja has been given to the first nine states that have already started receiving the money. But on a close look at the nine recipient states it shows that no state from the South East geo­political zone is among the first batch of recipients. Is it assumed that there is no poor persons from the South East?

I think this is not a ques­tion for me who belongs to the Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP) rather the ruling All Progressive Congress(APC) should be in the position to answer that question whether they can make a policy which excludes the South East. That is discrimination and Sec­tion 42 of the Constitution does not allow that. But I am not in a position to answer for APC for this willful neglect of citizens of a Nigeria. There are poor people all over Nigeria and nobody can say there no poor persons in the South East.

The nation has continued to ex­perience frequent power outage since the emergence of Buhari’s administration. As the chair­man Senate Committee on Power what is your committee doing to improve the power generation and distribution across the coun­try?

What the committee is doing now is interrogating all the dif­ferent elements along the power chain and to know how best to provide solution to power sec­tor. The problems of course are the financial, technical and envi­ronmental. Environmental is the main fact that there is insurgency in the Niger Delta and that has led to the shut-down of gas plants that would power the generating com­panies and so some of the power plant that are gas based were shut down due to the fact of the insur­gency in the Niger Delta and of course when there a shut down in a gas to a power plant then the gas ceases to generate power.

The next is the financial as­pect in which case the generat­ing companies are not getting paid and the monies that are supposed to have been coming from the distribution companies all the way up to the generating companies progressively get low­er and so the cost of the power coming from the generating companies is much higher than the cost of the power which the average consumer pays for and that creates a gap.

While the Igbos commend the efforts of your caucus in con­demning the current moves by the government at the centre to eliminate members of the Indig­enous People of Biafra (IPOB). We would like to know what your caucus is doing to use po­litical solution to grant bail to the leader of this militant group, Nnamdi Kanu who has been in detention for a long time now.

Well, there are ongoing dis­cussions on the matter but those are not what we would have to release to the public at this stage but suffice to say that we have had discussions with regards to Nnamdi Kanu and at the highest level government in this country. We have done so individually and as South East caucus with the highest level of government in this country. And so, it is not like we are keeping quiet about it but we think that when you are dealing with a delicate issues of this nature it is something that you should do without the fanfair that accompanies other issues.

Has there been any formal meet­ing between the South East Cau­cus and these agitators?

There has been but I am not at liberty to tell you all the things that we have discussed and don’t also forget there are several fac­tions and sub-factions. There even three or four different groups that are even in court and you know what the matter meant.

Source – The Authority