~ DIAMONDZ REVOLUTION

SPENDING STATUTORY ALLOCATION OF STATES UNDER EMERGENCY RULES GENERATES CONTROVERSY IN NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.

The House of Representatives last week moved to revoke the powers of the President in spending the statutory allocations of the three states under emergency rule, this move has started generating disagreement between the Lower Chamber and the Senate.
Adopting a motion sponsored by Ibrahim El-Sudi, the House had last Tuesday, through a resolution, deleted Section 3(2)(e) of the Emergency Powers (General Regulations), which authorizes the President to spend funds of the states under emergency rule as he considers desirable. The amendment is subject to the concurrence of the Senate. But some senators have started faulting the proposed amendment even ahead of its debate this week on the floor of the Senate.
Senator Suleiman Adokwe (PDP, Nasarawa State), in an interview in Abuja at the weekend, said it was wrong and unfair for governors of the three states to seek to continue to enjoy all their privileges even when their domains are under emergency rule.
He explained: “I believe that a state of emergency is a state of emergency. If you allow your state to get emergency rule, you can no longer enjoy all the privileges that are available to you before that state of emergency; otherwise it is no longer state of emergency. If the states and the local governments had the competence to deal with the situation with their funds, they would have dealt with it.
“If they couldn’t or they were misapplying them, now when you have state of emergency, in my opinion, the implication is that you are now sharing your power with someone who can put his foot down. In this case, Mr. President is the one that is putting his foot down to ensure that peace and order are restored. If that is so, then certain powers that you have must give way. If they don’t give way, then there is no emergency.”
Adokwe continued: “Even the way you are going to spend your money will also reflect that you have a state of emergency. If you have your money and they are going to keep soldiers, who is going to pay them? It must be clear whether the state and Federal Government will bear the cost together or not. The governors are very quick at saying they are the chief security officers of their states. If you couldn’t maintain peace in your state and it warranted the Federal Government’s presence, you really must give some of your powers away.”
According to Adokwe: “There are some governors that have tried very hard to maintain peace. You can commend the governor of Jigawa State, as close as he is to the trouble spot, he has been able to keep the peace there. People like that must be commended. “When Ahmed Makarfi was in Kaduna State, we had all sorts of explosions there but he was able to bring the situations under control. This shows some governors have some measure of power and authority to keep peace in their states. If you fail, then some of those powers must be taken away from you. That is why we have a state of emergency. That is my own philosophical understanding of state of emergency.”
The Senate Spokesman, Enyinnaya Abaribe, in his reaction to the development, said the House of Representatives was wrong in seeking to amend a position that had been jointly agreed to by both chambers of the National Assembly.
According to him: “Once the conference committee of both the Senate and the House takes a position on any issue, the report is no longer subject to any debate and, therefore, cannot be altered by either of the two chambers.”
On the security crisis in Nasarawa State, the lawmaker asked President Goodluck Jonathan to institute a judicial panel of enquiry to unravel the killing of security agents last month in that state.
He also alerted that the security situation in Nasarawa State might go out of control very soon if urgent steps are not taken to remedy it, adding that there were fears that some international terrorist groups could hijack the security situation to their advantage.
“What I say is that it remains mainly a communal clash. It has not degenerated to the level of sectarian or ethnic cleansing level that we witness in other jurisdictions. But I am not in any illusion at all that if it is not nipped in the bud, it will definitely go beyond what we are witnessing at the moment.”
He said that the Ombatse security crisis was a totally new dimension to the security problems known in Nasarawa State.