Why We Booed President Buhari During Budget Presentation – Lawmaker

Why We Booed President Buhari During Budget Presentation – Lawmaker

President Muhammadu Buhari was interrupted and booed intermittently by some lawmakers while addressing the joint session of the National Assembly on Wednesday.

The actions of the lawmakers threw the parliament into a rowdy session while the president presented the 2019 Appropriation Bill before the National Assembly.

Lawmakers from different political divides booed and cheered the president as he explained the budget details.

Mr Buhari eventually proposed a budget of N8.83 trillion for 2019.

One of the members who protested against the president, Kingsley Chinda (Rivers, PDP) said one of the main reasons the lawmakers protested was because of the “insincerity” of the presidency during the implementation of previous budgets.

“The presidency has not been fair to Nigerians when it comes to budget and most often they use that to blame the legislature.

“One example is, when it comes to capital releases, you will find out that they have performed very poorly.”

He said having performed so poorly, the president ”still talks about how to turn the economy around when they have not released capital expenditures, what magic are they going to do?

“Today he told Nigerians that they have about N800 billion so far for capital expenditures as against N6.4 trillion, if you calculate that, it will give you about 16 per cent.

“What it means is that they have achieved just 16 per cent release of capital expenditures.”

He added that during their oversight, they discovered from some government agencies that only eight per cent of their 2018 budget was released.

“The economy cannot move with that kind of practice.”

He frowned at what he described as the executive disobedience to the Constitution ”which placed some agencies under the first line charge”.

He also said the protest was not ‘planned’.

“The protest was not planned, it was spontaneous. This morning, people just felt there was a need for it,” he said.

He said they had the ‘support’ of their colleagues from the ruling APC.

“It is not just about PDP lawmakers, some of the APC lawmakers felt that because they belonged to the same political party with the president, it will not be tidy for them to come to the open.

“They are actually not happy with what is going on in the system,” he added.