This is from the Financial Times.
*************************************************************************

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

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------