Constituency projects will ensure even development, says Dogara

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has asked members of the National Assembly to put more emphasis on execution of constituency projects, saying it is the only way to attract the presence of the Federal Government to the people.

Dogara maintained that except for constituency projects, majority of federal constituencies would not have a single federal project due to lopsided nature of projects allocation in the budget.

Recall that controversy had trailed the alleged removal of some key projects, including the Lagos-Calabar rail project and the inclusion of constituency projects in the 2016 Appropriation Bill, as passed by the National Assembly.

But some members of the House of Representatives have argued that the power of appropriation is vested in the legislature.Following this development, the House of Representatives last Thursday on the floor of the chamber passed for second reading a bill that sought to allocate 2.5 per cent of the annual budget to a Constituency Development Fund.

The proposed legislation also sought to make constituency projects evenly spread across the country as against the lopsidedness, which currently obtains.

Leading debate on the bill, it’s sponsor, Solomon Adaelu (PDP, Abia), told the parliament that the establishment of Constituency Development Fund was needful to streamline planning and execution of projects nationwide.

According to him: “While these projects reside with Ministries, Departments and Agencies, there is a wrong notion that funds for constituency projects are remitted to lawmakers.”

“If we have constituency fund, the present administration may not have need to appropriate N500 billion as social intervention fund,” the lawmaker argued.

Speaker Yakubu Dogara after allowing debate, referred the bill to Committees on Constituency Outreach, Appropriation and Finance for further legislative action.

If passed into law, the bill will address the accusations against members of the National Assembly that they collect constituency project funds without executing the jobs.

Dogara added that: “The only way through which we can maintain fairness in governance, fairness across the length and breadth of this country is by patronising federal constituencies. When you patronise federal constituencies you have touched every nook and cranny of Nigeria and that is why we will continue as leaders to ensure that we have programmes in governance that touch directly on constituencies of this country.”