We will crush APC's anti-budget plot - PDP lawmakers
Senators and House of Representatives
members elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party have
vowed to crush a plan by the opposition All Progressives Congress to
block the passage of the 2014 budget.
The APC, after a meeting of its National
Executive Council meeting on Thursday, had directed its members to stop
the passage of the budget until the “rule of law” was restored in
Rivers State.
The party blamed the Presidency and the
PDP for allegedly fuelling the crisis in Rivers and using government
machinery like the police to hound the opposition in the state.
But the PDP caucus in the House told SUNDAY PUNCH in Abuja on Friday that it would not lose sleep over the plan of the APC to shut down government.
The Deputy Majority Leader, Mr. Leo
Ogor, told one of our correspondents that passing the budget was a joint
responsibility of the Senate and the House that did not require a
simple majority to be done.
He said, “Both the Senate and the House will pass the budget without losing sleep if the APC members
choose to stay away.
“There is no problem in the Senate and I
can assure you there will be no problem in the House as well. The
quorum for sitting is one-third of 360 members; so do the arithmetic.
“What that means is that if all the APC
members boycott the House, our business will go on smoothly because
there will be still more than one-third of members sitting.
“The budget is a national assignment; for us, we are here to serve Nigerians, not a particular political party.”
Similarly, Senator Smart Adeyemi of the
PDP said the APC was not being reasonable and that its stance on the
budget would not endear it to Nigerians.
He said, “I do not think any Senator who
has the mandate of his people will believe in what the APC is calling
for. Their senators will find it difficult to take this position because
the party is asking them to go against the interest of the people, to
put the people in perpetual slavery and suffering.”
In the House, a cross-section of PDP
lawmakers who pleaded anonymity expressed same sentiments as those of
their counterparts in the Senate. According to them, the House could
take major and minor decisions without APC members.
One of the PDP representatives, Mr. Mike
Akpan-Umoh, said APC members could “choose to stay away, but the budget
will be passed.”
APC lawmakers, however, said their PDP colleagues had lost touch with the “reality of the Nigerian situation.”
A key APC member and Chairman, House
Committee on Justice, Mr. Ali Ahmad, stated that the party’s directive
was just a way of calling government to order.
He added, “A directive is a directive; the APC is a disciplined party and we will comply.”
Similarly, Senator Olufemi Lanlehin,
insisted that his APC colleagues in the Senate would abide by the
directive of their leaders by ensuring that due attention was drawn to
the looming danger in Rivers State.
“You know the process of passing budget
is unique, it will undergo a debate on the floor of the Senate before it
would be referred to the various committees. It will then be brought
back to the floor again for approval.
“We are prepared to employ lawful means to draw the nation’s attention to the crisis in Rivers,” he said
In a related development, Interim
Chairman of the Rivers State chapter of the APC, Dr. Davies Ikanya, who
hailed the decision of the party’s national leadership, said the
directive would restore sanity to the nation’s polity.
Ikanya, who spoke on Friday through his
Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mr. Chukwuemeka Eze, said apart from
growing the country’s democracy, the directive would prove to the PDP
that it was no longer the majority in the National Assembly.
“From Rivers State, which they have
virtually made ungovernable to the National Assembly, where they have
also exported their lawlessness, the PDP and the Jonathan Presidency
have shown beyond every reasonable doubt that the only language they
understand is force,” Ikanya said.
The PDP in the state, however, faulted
the threat by the APC to block all proposals by the presidency through
its members in the National Assembly for allegedly supporting
lawlessness and impunity in Rivers State.
In a statement signed by the Special
Adviser, Media, to the State Chairman, Mr. Jerry Needam, added that the
APC’s threat in itself was an act of lawlessness and impunity aimed at
grounding the lawmaking machinery of government.
Source: The Punch