Apparently miffed by reports by the bribe scandal trailing the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), the Senate President, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, has debunked the allegation, saying it is “unwarranted, unprovable, false and fake information.’’
Specifically, the lawmaker denied allegations that he and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, collected a bribe of $10 million each for the passage of the PIB which was signed by President Muhammadu Buhari last week.
The Senate President clarified: “Recently somebody said $10 million was given to the Speaker and the Senate President to give to members of the National Assembly to pass 3 per cent development fund. That is funny, but also very serious.
“I really want to take this opportunity to take exceptions to those kinds of unwarranted unprovable false and fake information being fed to the Nigerian public.
“The danger people will face with this is you cause unnecessary damage to the reputation of people, I had an occasion to take someone to court because of this kind of thing about three months ago. But Nigerians are better judges and lawyers.
“So the freedom of expression is there, probably more than anywhere in the world. But I want to advise that Nigerians should always think about their leaders and their administration and their governments in positive light,’’ the Senate President told State House correspondents on Monday at the Presidential Villa on the outcome of his meeting with President Buhari.
A recent publication by SaharaReporters, an online medium, had indicated that the Senate President allegedly received $2 million (about N823 million) while the Speaker of the House of Representatives allegedly got $1.5 million (about N617 million) paid to them as bribes.
The medium named the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, as the facilitator of the bribe with each senator getting $20,000 (about N8.2 million) while representatives were paid $5,000 (about N2 million) each.
Noting that while the country’s Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, Lawan said the same constitution also gave ordinary Nigerians the right to hold their leaders to account, stressing, however, that the right should not be seen as a licence to impugn the integrity of their leaders with “unverifiable allegations.’’
He elaborated: “But of course, bigger legacies will be that the orientation of Nigerians is such that they are free to say whatever they want to say about their government, about their leaders, and so on and so forth.
“And that we have really established ourselves as an administration, where people can say anything or everything about the President about the administration about members of National Assembly, they call us names. This is part of the intangible dividends of democracy.
“But we are determined to ensure that the space is wide open for everybody to say whatever he wants to say. But I will advise that don’t say things that are bad because people are in the habit of doing this.
“If they have issues, they think very strongly about, let them speak the truth. And we are prepared to take corrections that we feel should be able to make us do better”, Lawan added.
The Senate President also told journalists that he discussed the 2022 budget matters with the president and that the administration was committed to completing the 2nd Niger bridge and some major road projects during the fiscal year.
“We also had discussions on the 2022 budget and we believe that the budget will be the icing on the cake so to speak, that is to say, that we have to make sufficient provision for the security agencies and also sufficient provisions for our legacy projects.
“We hope and our desire now is in tandem with what the Presidency wants, that is, to ensure that the legacy projects are completed by next year by the grace of God. These are the major projects, like the second Niger Bridge, the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano highway and so on and so forth.
“That these projects are completed within next year and Mr. President is able to commission them for Nigerians to benefit”, he added
On failure of ministries, department and agencies (MDAs) to remit collected Internally Generate Revenue (IGR) into government coffers, Lawan said the National Assembly was considering stiffer sanctions against such defaulting MDAs agencies as doing so will reduce governments’ borrowings to fund yearly budgets.
He said: “There are so many agencies of government that are not remitting their internally generated revenues and this is something that we have to address and address as stiffly as possible and as quickly as possible because we need to find a way of reducing the borrowing that we do.
“So, if there are areas that we can now get revenues that will help us reduce the amount of borrowing, then so be it and this is something that we all agree with Mr. President that we should continue to look at those areas that we need to improve on revenue generation and collection.
“Thank God we are on the same page with Mr. President, all these issues, and for us it’s a renewal of our commitment to Nigerians and to the administration, that in the National Assembly, our focus is Nigeria, our priority is Nigeria, we have no personal interest in anything.
“What will make Nigeria better is what concerns us. At the end of the day, we will have a date with history and want to be on the right side of history,’’ Lawan assured.
