Senate Threatens To Arrest Okonjo-Iweala

A brewing face-off between the executive and the legislature over the implementation of the 2012 budget worsened yesterday with the Senate threatening to order the arrest of the coordinating minister of the economy and minister of finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, unless she appears before it to defend the 2012 budget releases and utilisation.
An obviously incensed Senate threatened to use all means necessary to mandate the coordinating minister to appear before it on Thursday.
The senators also faulted claims by the minister that the budget has attained 56 per cent performance, insisting that the performance level is as low as 21.56 per cent.
Speaking at an interactive session on the budget, Senate president David Mark, who was represented by his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, lambasted the executive for accusing the National Assembly of tampering with the budget and thus making its full implementation impossible.
The presence of former president of the Senate and now secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), Anyim Pius Anyim, minister of state for finance, minister of transport, director-general of the Budget Office and auditor-general at the interactive session could not sway the lawmakers to spare Okonjo-Iweala.
Mark lamented that the absence of Okonjo-Iweala was a major setback to the appraisal of the budget performance so far. He said: “We had expected the minister of finance and coordinating minister for the economy to be here today because she is central to all that we are going to discuss here today as our chairman on appropriation had mentioned, this matter was supposed to be discussed last week but the Minister was unavoidably absent.

We stand by our figures
– Finance Ministry
But the Federal Ministry of Finance (FMF) has in its reaction to the development, insist that the 56 per cent budget implementation figure remains correct having done its homework correctly.
A reliable source at the ministry, who pleaded anonymity, explained that the 56 per cent was based on the N324 billion cash-backed budget and not on the entire N1.3 trillion capital expenditure.
The source said, “We have done our home work properly. We are not claiming anything we have not done. The percentage of cash-backed portion of the 2012 capital budget of n1.3 trillion implemented is 56 per cent.”