Bukola Saraki, Senate President, has promised to visit the alleged corruption in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. He also promised that the Senate, under his leadership, would fix the amount the corporation could spend to run its operations.
Saraki said this when member groups of the Civil Society Situation Room, led by the convener,Clement Nwankwo, paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja.
The Senate president lamented that the non-provision of operational budget for income generating federal agencies had been responsible for leakages in government’s revenues.
“Such era where there was deliberate non-provision of operational budget for agencies of government to function is over,” he assured his guests. He said the 8th Senate would, on resumption from its current break, promptly attend to the 1999 Constitution Amendment bill, the 2011 Electoral Act Amendment Bill and the Petroleum Industry Bill.”
Continuing he added that “Some of us have strong views that issues of budget must be transparent; the days are gone when agencies like the NNPC would be functioning without operational budget. We must move away from that because one of the key issues that we have now is the issue of revenue leakages due to lack of transparency.”
The Senate President noted that some of the bills were critical to the current reform project of the Federal Government, hence, they would be given accelerated attention. “You have raised a number of bills, one of which is the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, which is key to deepening the electoral process, more importantly is the Constitution Amendment Bill, which unfortunately could not be assented to after all the work that was done on it.
“I can assure you that as soon as we resume, we will begin discussion on how to go about bringing all those bills that are people-oriented back with a view to fast tracking their passage, as soon as we resume, we will find a way of fast tracking some of these people-oriented bills that are still left to be attended to.”
Saraki while assuring Nigerians that the Senate would work hard towards ensuring transparency in governance added that, “On the issue of transparency of oversight, we will work very hard to see the areas where there can be improvement on our part.
“As duly elected representatives of the people, we will work closely with every stakeholder in our onerous task of building a prosperous, secured and egalitarian society, where the dividend of democracy will be felt by the people.”
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