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Date: | Thu, 30 Mar 2000 11:08:23 EST |
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This is from the Financial Times.
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WORLD NEWS: Nigerian assembly in budget clash PAY AWARDS THREAT TO DEBT
RELIEF HOPE:
83% match; Financial Times ; 29-Mar-2000 12:00:00 am ; 443 words
Nigerian government off-icials were yesterday trying to dissuade the National
Assembly from awarding itself N29bn (Dollars 290m) in salaries in an effort
to avert a potentially explosive public row.
The bicameral national assembly is due to pass a long delayed N683bn budget
today. Approved by the Senate on Monday, the budget follows months of
wrangling and revisions because of fluctuations in the price of oil, which
contributes more than 75 per cent of government revenues.
Extravagant gestures could damage Nigeria's pursuit of relief on more than
Dollars 30bn in foreign debt, even if the forecast deficit of 2 per cent of
GDP meets conditions for a planned standby agreement with the International
Monetary Fund.
A common complaint of assembly members has been a shortage of funding for
constituency offices members have been told to set up. But following the
furore over hefty furniture allowances last year, the Nigerian public is
unlikely to sympathise.
Divided between 109 senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives
the sum is equivalent to more than Dollars 600,000 each a year in a country
where per capita GDP is only Dollars 250.
"This is unacceptable. Informally we are reaching out to the leadership of
both houses," a presidency official said yesterday. "We will stand up to
them. They run the risk of being totally discredited in front of their
constituents."
President Olusegun Obasanjo has no power to veto items selectively but can
veto the budget as a whole. By doing so he risks holding it up further at a
time when the economy has slowed and government is struggling to contain
rising social and ethnic tension. If the assembly insists on pushing it
through as is, it can override a presidential veto with a two thirds
majority.
"For the first time in Nigeria the big man has neither the stick, because he
cannot sack them (members), nor the carrot, because they have the powers of
appropriation," said an official source close to the assembly leadership.
"Some members would rather see the whole place go down than the president
dictate their budget allocation."
In recent months, everyone from building contractors to IMF officials has
discovered the assembly's power over the budget enshrined in the 1999
constitution makes doing business with it unavoidable. A resulting power
struggle with the executive has paralysed government, blocking legislation
and fuelling a growing national sentiment that the new political system is
failing to deliver.
Mr Obasanjo's own case has been weakened by the Dollars 80m he requested last
month to buy the Sultan of Brunei's Airbus to replace a 20-year-old
presidential Boeing.
Ever since they began sitting last June, members have complained that Mr
Obasanjo has tried to control the assembly in the manner of the military
ruler he was in the 1970s. The president's men reply that members have looked
after their own interests first while blocking initiatives designed to serve
the nation.
Copyright © The Financial Times Limited
hkanteh
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