Infuriated by the comment made by former interim national chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande on the status of the 2016 Budget, the Senate Saturday fired back at him, saying he was expressing his frustration for not being able to impose his lackeys on the National Assembly.
Akande had described the claim that the 2016 Budget was missing from the Senate as an indication of the indiscipline that produced the leadership of the Senate.
But in a statement by its spokesman, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the Senate urged Akande to check his records properly so that he could see that “at no time did the Senate say the 2016 Budget was missing.”
According to Abdullahi, it was regrettable that a man of Akande’s status “would be responding to mere speculation without cross-checking his facts or worse still, eager to latch onto any opportunity to bring to disrepute the leadership of the Senate because he failed to get his choice candidates elected.”
This, he said, was despite the fact that the legislative house had insisted in several official statements and interviews by its principal officers that the budget was not missing but that two different versions are now available.
The statement noted: “We have said it several times that the budget was not missing. That two versions of the details of the budget exist and this is no longer in doubt as the Presidency has equally admitted this.
“We expect a man of Akande’s calibre to cross-check his facts and take us up on our words. That he decided to ignore the facts and make comments on speculations is regrettable. He is a man who had served in government. He is a leader of the party with the majority in the Senate and he has several channels of cross-checking facts as against speculations.”
The Senate spokesman said contrary to Akande’s description of what happened as indiscipline on the part of the leadership, the position of the present Senate leadership is a demonstration of the regime of openness, transparency and accountability that now reigns in the Upper Legislative Chamber. In the past, he said, such a development would have been swept under the carpet.
He added that the statements by Akande was another expression of the frustration that the former governor of Osun State suffers for not being able to impose his lackeys on the Senate as leaders.
-Leadership
