Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has said
President Muhammadu Buhari should be ashamed that he signed 2018 budget in June
instead of blaming the National Assembly for performing its constitutional
duties of increasing the appropriation bill in line with its statutory
oversight right.
Fayose asked: “The previous budgets that he agreed
with the National
Assembly, what did he do with them? Where are the
impacts of 2016 and 2017 budgets?”
The governor, who described those presenting the president
as the only one knowledgeable about national issues as his greatest enemies,
said: “In the mindset of President Buhari and his men, all Nigerians are wrong
except him. That is the reason he feigned ignorance to the fact that the law
did not say that the legislative arm of government must pass the budget as
presented by the executive.”
In a statement issued in Ado Ekiti on Thursday by his
Special
Assistant on Public Communications, Lere Olayinka,
Fayose said: “President Buhari has become what can be termed as blame specialist
who will always blame his failure on other people.
“As a military Head of State, he blamed former
President Shehu
Shagari’s government. Since he assumed office, he
has been blaming his predecessor. And now that he can’t get ordinary budget
passed by the
National Assembly for over six months, he is
blaming the legislative arm. When is he going to be man enough to stop his
blame game?”
Fayose reminded the president of the 2016 ruling of
Justice
Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court in Abuja
in which he declared that the National Assembly has the power to add, reduce,
and review the budget. The judge said categorically that the National Assembly
can increase or review upward, budget estimates laid before it by the executive.
:Trying to use the National Assembly as scape goat
for his failure is a disservice to the principle of separation of powers,
checks and balances,” he said.
Meanwhile, Fayose has accused the federal government
of deliberately withholding the release of the Paris Club refund to states
purposely to prevent Ekiti State from using the money to pay arrears of
workers' salary before the July 14 governorship election.
This is just as the governor also warned the
Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) against stopping the
collation of elections results midway, as it was done during the governorship election
in Edo State.
Fayose, who spoke through his Chief Press
Secretary, Mr. Idowu Adelusi,
in Ado Ekiti on Thursday, said Ekiti and other states
had been cleared to get the refund, but the federal government refused to
release it to the states because of the state election as it did in Kogi State.
The governor said: "If it is released to other
states without the inclusion of Ekiti, the people will suspect that the federal
government of playing politics with it.
The federal government used that tactics in Kogi State to assist the APC
candidate to win.
"I am using this forum to inform Ekiti people
that the federal government is
punishing and depriving them of their entitlements
because of politics. It thinks that if I am not able to pay the four months salaries
owed the workers, they will vote for APC.”
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