Alleges Discrepancies in Egbetokun’s Budget
A member of the Senate Onyekachi Nwoebonyi (Ebonyi-North), angrily walked out from the presentation of details of the budget presented by the Inspector General of Police Kayode Egbetokun on Thursday.
Uproar had started when the lawmaker, a member of the joint committee of the National Assembly scrutinizing the budget raised objections to the presentation by Egbetokun saying that the documents handed over to members were different from the one Egbetokun was reading.
Chairman of the Committee however made attempt to overrule the senator who insisted that as a representative of his people, he had all the right make clarifications on the budget presentation.
While a few members of the committee went along with the angry senator insisting on getting the exact copy of the version the IGP was reading, many others dismissed the senator telling him to walk out if he so desired.
A helpless Egbetokun has watched the scene not saying anything.
He was joined by Sen. Nwoebonyi, a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who also insisted that Egbetokun must distribute the copies he was reading to members and not the one already before them to be sure that they were working with the same document.
He shouted, “We are here to serve Nigerians and Nigerians should see us as a very serious institution.
“We are not against the presentation of the IGP, but I, as the senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, should have what the IGP is reading.”
After his point of order was overruled by the co-chairman from the House, Hon. Abubakar Makki-Yalleman, while the IGP continued to read from his copy, the senator stormed out.
“I am leaving; I am going. This country belongs to all of us,” he shouted.
Expressing his disappointment over the uproar, a member of the House, Hon. Yusuf Gagdi, said the conduct of the angry lawmakers was “unparliamentary”.
Gagdi, a ranking member, noted that the established parliamentary tradition was that the presiding chairman must first recognise and yield the floor to a member before they could speak.
He deplored the method of interjecting the chair or wanting to stop the IGP from reading his speech because his views must be heard.
He complained of the annual inadequate funding of the police through the envelope system, which he said rarely took into detail the needs of the crime-preventing outfit.