The recently commissioned world class Oshodi Transport Interchange and high and medium capacity buses for public transportation in Lagos by President Muhammadu Buhari is in danger if what transpired during debate on the report of the Appropriation committee of the Lagos State House of Assembly and subsequent passage of the budget on Monday is anything to go by.
The projects initiated by the outgoing Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s administration have unresolved issues with the Lagos Assembly which would affect their speedy completion.
In fact the projects were the only issues that came up for mention during the debate of the Appropriation committee report on the 2019 budget at plenary on Monday before the budget was eventually passed.
Part of the recommendation of the committee as contained in the report was that the money budgeted for completion of the projects should be deleted from the 2019 budget, which would have meant stalling or stopping work outright on the projects.
Our investigations into why the House would want to do that to such laudable projects that would bring succour to millions revealed there are issues of non- compliance by the executive to directives of the Assembly concerning the projects.
However, during the brief debate on the committee report at plenary, Chief Whip of the House, Hon. Rotimi Abiru advised that instead of deleting the monies for the projects from the budget, it should be transferred to Special Expenditure fund.
Former Chairman of the Appropriation committee, Hon. Rotimi Olowo, who spoke after Abiru supported the suggestion.
They were the only two people who contributed to the debate and it was the only issue raised before the committee’s report was adopted as a resolution of the House and budget was subsequently passed.
The implication of remitting the monies to the special expenditure fund is the governor cannot assess the money unless he makes recourse to the House.
Our investigations revealed that the lawmakers took this step because, according to them, the two projects are alien or unknown to the House.
A source in the House, who craved anonymity, said: “The Oshodi transport interchange and bus projects as captured in the budget are unknown to the House; the two projects are not really known to this House because they were not budgeted for in the previous budgets”.
Our source further revealed although the governor made request for them during the 2018 budget re-ordering when the House demanded for more information on the projects from the Executive there was no response.
“So what the House did in the last budget, there were some expenditures that we put under special expenditure fund because we needed more information on these projects which was not given to us when we were working on the budget and this two projects fall into that category.
“The reason for keeping them in special expenditure is that whenever the governor wants to assess the money he will make recourse to the House so that whatever we need to know will be explained to us.
“But despite the fact that we gave that order from 2018 budget, the executive was spending that money without making recourse to the House and that is why the House is saying the projects are not known to it.”
It is these same projects that the executive is making request for further funding in the 2019 budget which the House has declined.
“The reason for declining the request is because of the previous instruction that we gave which they did not comply with.”
A lawmaker, who also craved anonymity, said his colleagues agreed at their parliamentary meeting to move the funds to Special Expenditure for two reasons.
Firstly, deleting them completely from the budget will affect the total size of the budget which was ready for passage and would result to further delay in trying to reconcile the budget with the new reality.
And secondly, “now a new government is coming in, Ambode is going, taking the expenditure for the two items to the special expenditure fund means that the new administration can still assess the monies and continue with the projects once it makes recourse to the Assembly for approval.”