The president of the Senate
Dr Bukola Saraki has responded to the allegation of budget padding, delay and
distortion against him and Speaker Yakubu Dogara, by APC national leader Bola
Tinubu.
In a 14-point statement
issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Yusuph Olaniyonu,
Sariki said that the allegations by Tinubu wre false and fallacious.
Tinubu had in a statement
on Sunday stressed that the APC did not what a repeat of what happened in the
8th senate were its ‘un-anointed’ leadership high jacked the process.
He said in the statement:
“Just look at how outgoing Senate President Bukola Saraki and House of
Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara and their like, highjacked the budget
process these past four years.
“National budgets were
delayed and distorted as these actors repeatedly sought to pad budgets with pet
projects that would profit them.
“Even worse, they cut funds
intended to prosper projects that would have benefitted the average person.
“After four years of their
antics halting the progress of government, we should do all we can to prevent a
repeat of their malign control of the National Assembly.”
However, reacting to the
statement by Tinubu, Saraki who alleged that Tinubu ‘hated’ him, stressed that
the delay or otherwise in budget passage was a factor of the time of
submission.
He urged the former senator
Tinubu to look at the time of passage of budgets from 2010 and compare to the
last three years, noting that budgets had mostly been passes between March and
May.
Saraki said that the
attacks by Tinubu on his person and the leadership of the National Assembly has
become quarterly, describing the recent allegations as “careless, irresponsible
and callous.
“We therefore demand that
he should withdraw it,” he said.
“Since we have taken it for
granted that Tinubu’s attack on Saraki every three months (Quarterly) will come
as expected, we would just have ignored his statement but for the fact that it
was filled with untruth, fallacies and misrepresentations.
“The statement was another
effort to sell a concocted narrative about the Eighth National Assembly and its
leadership.
“Let us repeat again that
we know that a Machiavellian politician like Tinubu will forever agonize over
his erroneous belief that Dr. Saraki frustrated his ambition from becoming
running mate to President Muhammadu Buhari through a Muslim-Muslim ticket in
2015.
“In his usual cavalier
manner, he will stop at nothing to punish Saraki for that. We know that this
attack is not about the interest of the nation or that of President Muhammadu
Buhari. It is about his 2023 ambition and it is obvious in the statement as he
struggled to explain this away.
“Tinubu should leave Dr.
Saraki out of his schemes and manipulations towards 2023. It is obvious his arbitrary
and tactless interference in the process for the emergence of the leadership of
the Ninth Assembly is already falling through.
“A situation where he,
Tinubu, is dictating to elected legislators and ordering them to either comply
with his directives or get out of the party will not augur well for the
legislature in the next dispensation.
“Tinubu should know that
while we await his attack for the next quarter, we can only advise him to stay
on facts.”
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