EDEGBE ODEMWINGIE this week reports on the planned release of the House of Representatives Committee on Ethics and Privileges probe report on the $620,000 bribery tale. The secret budget defence of the education ministry and the contentious simultaneous public hearings for the ongoing constitution review process is also mentioned.
The gist is that for the lack of evidence, the House of Representatives is set to exonerate the embattled Farouk Lawan from the $620,000 bribery allegation leveled against him by billionaire oil magnate, Mr Femi Otedola.
Also, the Gambo Dan-Musa led House Committee on Ethics and Privileges is set to release the report of its in-house probe into the bribery allegation which Otedola alleged would have amounted to $3million before details of the deal leaked to the public.
Addressing newsmen on the state of affairs of the House, Deputy Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs and member of the Ethics and Privileges Committee, Victor Ogene on Thursday, said the protracted release of the probe report only boiled down to a matter of “scheduling”. Ogene disclosed that the probe report will be submitted at plenary when federal lawmakers resume from their two week break.
The House Committee on Media and Public Affairs also washed its hands of the Clerk of the Ad Hoc Committee that investigated the fuel subsidy regime, Mr Boniface Emenalo, who was fingered in the cash-for-clearance scandal.
House spokesman, Zakari Mohammed told newsmen that the Clerk was a civil servant and was being handled in-house by the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC).
“The report of the Ethics and Privileges Committee as it concerns Hon. Farouk Lawan is ready and is a question of scheduling. It was supposed to have been tendered before the House before we went on the Sallah break so as soon as we resume for plenary on November 6, the committee will thereafter submit the report”, Ogene stated.
In July, Otedola who was supposed to testify on his bribery allegations against the former chairman of Subsidy Probe Committee, Farouk Lawan, insisted that he will only give evidence in public - a situation a member of the Ethics and Privileges panel (preferring anonymity) said informed the panel’s decision to clear Lawan of complicity in the alleged bribery plot.
“Of course, an allegation remains an allegation until proven. Femi Otedola who made the allegations refused to give his testimony before the committee, so we had no basis to pursue further punitive measures against Farouk Lawan since nothing was proven”, the committee member told LEADERSHIP.
Otedola in a purported sting operation reportedly sanctioned by Nigeria’s State Security Service (SSS) video tapped the $620,000 bribe offered Lawan to clear Otedola’s oil firm, Zenon, earlier indicted for fuel fraud investigated by the Lawan led House panel. Lawan insisted that he took the money as evidence.
‘A family affair’
Rising from a two-hour close door meeting, the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Minister of Education, Prof Ruqayyatu Rufa’I last week reached an “agreement” on the N426.53 billion budget appropriated for education for 2013.
Midway into the closed door executive session, two members of the House education panel including its Deputy Chairman stormed angrily out of the meeting mumbling between themselves incoherent protests on certain aspects of the education budget.
But speaking after the budget defence meeting, the Deputy Chairman denied storming angrily out of the meeting, insisting that the close-door executive session was not to hatch any negative plot.
“I was not angry at the meeting, what I was trying to do was to put everything correct as it is supposed to be. And afterwards everything was put in order. Not that anything happened. You see, we agree and disagree. We are just fighting for the standard of education to be improved. The closed door session was not made for any negative action. Not all information is meant for the public”, he told newsmen on the sidelines of the meeting.
Acting Chairman House Committee on Education, Hon Rose Oko chorused similar responses on the motive of the closed door session. According to her, the executive session was to look at some of the details in the budget and make sure that the committee and the education ministry were “on the same page” in the interest of the education sector.
Oko expressed worry that the education ministry’s budget had huge percentage earmarked for trainings at the detriment of deficient infrastructure needs in the education sector. She disclosed to newsmen that both parties reached an agreement to “appropriate” and “reallocate” some areas of the education ministry 2013 budget.
She said, “We are a bit worried by the ministry’s capital budget where there is a preponderance of programmes, workshops and conferences. Where as a matter of fact, out of a total budget of about N7 billion, you have a huge percentage of that dedicated to programmes, workshops and conference when the infrastructural facilities in schools, universities, unity schools that you superintend directly are crying for attention. We wonder that you spend this huge amount on training and the schools that you superintend do not have the facility to work with.
Oko called for redirecting resources in the education budget to some of the critical areas that need attention.
Education minister, Prof Ruqayyatu Rufa’i said the sector’s budget largely targeted refocusing on two major areas: access/equity and standards and quality assurance. She described the closed door meeting as a “family discussion”
“It was a family discussion between the main sector and those overseeing the sector in terms of the committee members of the House. It was just a friendly discussion that we had” Rufa’I said.
In an earlier meeting, the panel queried the deployment and secrecy around the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) profiles of Ministries, Departments and Agencies in the educational sector including tertiary institutions.
Federal lawmakers raised concerns over a curious trend where virtually all tertiary institutions in the country channel their total IGRs to paying utility bills and maintenance, a cost already captured in previous budgets.
Nay Referendum
Federal lawmakers on Thursday resisted calls by stakeholders in select quarters to subject the ongoing constitution amendment process to a referendum tagging such plan as untenable and unconstitutional.
The Lower House insisted that the simultaneous special peoples’ public hearing for the review of the 1999 constitution will hold in the 360 federal constituencies across Nigeria as scheduled for November 10.
It will be recalled that President, Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Mr Okey Wali at Wednesday inauguration of its committee on the review of the 1999 constitution, called for a referendum at the end of the ongoing review by the National Assembly. According to Wali, the procedure adopted by the House lacked legitimacy.
Meanwhile, briefing newsmen on Thursday in Abuja, Chairman House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Zakari Mohammed stated that the National Assembly would not engage in any unconstitutional act in the process of its review of the Nigerian constitution.
The House spokesman said “We have sworn to protect the constitution and anything outside of it will not be too much of our problem. We cannot subscribe to extra constitutional provisions”.
According to Mohammed, Sections 4 and 9 of the 1999 constitution was very explicit and made no provision for referendum as being clamored He added that the public hearings were only avenues for the lawmakers to aggregate views and opinions of the people.
“The best option we have adopted is to go and meet the people to tell us exactly where they stand. So we want to state very clearly that the public hearings will hold”
The House spokesman described as “unfortunate” statements credited to the NBA that the House approach to the review process was “unproductive”.
The special public hearing sessions are to be flagged off by Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal on November 8, while the sessions would hold simultaneously on November 10 in all the 360 federal constituencies in the country.
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