16th July, 2010
Members of the Lagos State House of Assembly yesterday evening dumped the much needed supplementary budget and proceeded on a month and two weeks recess.
The N46 billion supplementary budget which was sent to the House by the State Government recently had scaled through the second reading despite being earlier rejected by the House over some discrepancies involving N11 billion in the budget.
The supplementary budget according to the letter which accompanied the budget proposal, tagged ‘Re: Y2010 Supplementary Appropriation, stressed that there was the need to revisit some provisions of the year 2010 budget because of developments since the 2010 budget was passed by the House.
Governor Babatunde Fashola said: “it has therefore, become imperative to supplement the year 2010 budget in order to ameliorate the financial constraints affecting on-going projects and programmes overseas and local healthcare costs for indigent and critically ill citizens.â€
The Speaker of the House, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, had also asked the members to give the supplementary budget a speedy passage. But the House, which sat at exactly 5pm yesterday and presided over by the Majority Leader, Kolawole Taiwo, left out the deliberation on it and declared a six weeks recess for members.
Though he did not give any reason for the action of the House, a source told P.M. NEWS that the lawmakers were angry over the refusal of the executive to forward documents requested by them on the bill.
The source also said the bill would now be passed by September if the “issues are resolved before the lawmakers reconvene.
Defending the decision of the House, Hon. Taiwo said though he was not in the best position to speak on the issue, he, however, said that it was only the Speaker of the House who could state when the budget would be passed.
When reminded that the executive arm needed it to complete some on-going projects, he said projects in the state cannot be completed easily as development was a continuous thing.
On the constant lateness of members to sittings, he said it was because the members had other legislative duties which kept them busy.
—Eromosele Ebhomele