House of Reps Member Calls for Equality in Allocation of Constituency Projects

A member of the House of Representatives, Mr. Daniel Reyenieju, has urged members of the National Assembly as they resume from their annual vacation to rededicate their efforts to address the current economic reality through institutional collaborative efforts so as to soon put same behind the Nigerian masses.

In a telephone chat with Vanguard, Reyenieju who represents Warri Federal Constituency said that for the National Assembly to play the required “positive role in the resolution of the current socio-economic crises afflicting the nation, thus fulfilling its constitutional mandate, the House as a collective, including the respective individual members must avoid any form of pretense such that attempt to gloss over the crises generated by the budget-padding, which if not properly handled, could bring the House into disrepute, both nationally and internationally.”

He said that the allegation of budget-padding, “If each member of the House will want to be sincere when going through National Assembly Budget Research Office, NABRO, document of their geographical zones, one cannot but be suffocated with the oozing of stench of injustice, entrenched inequality and the evil of budget-padding.

“For example, while individual members within the House leadership can conveniently boast of attracting constituency projects worth billions of Naira to their constituencies, majority of members in their respective individual capacities may only be “fortunate’ to be given constituency projects worth few tens of millions of naira, as if the respective constituencies which those within the leadership cadre represent are superior in term of demography, land mass, quality of constituents, etc to those constituencies members like us represent.

“Those occupying leadership positions in both Houses of the National Assembly are at best primus inter pares (first among equals) and this does not in any way connote the superiority of the political units they represent in relationship to the constituencies other members represent.”

“It has become imperative that allocation of constituency projects should henceforth, be based on equalitarian principle, particularly that all geopolitical units being represented in both chambers of the National Assembly are equal within the letter and spirit of the Nigeria’s Constitution.”

Source: Vanguard