Lawan headache for National Assembly leaders

THE leadership of the current National Assembly may be sounding tough, but beneath their tough utterances are fear and trepidation over the fate that could befall them after May 29 when they would have vacated their seats.

Their main headache is Senator Ahmed Lawan, the Senate Majority Leader who has been adopted as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Muhammadu Buhari in the jostle for the seat of the Senate President in the 9th National Assembly.

The current leaders are indeed not looking into the future with confidence because they fear that Lawan would go after them at the promptings of the executive once he becomes the Senate President. One issue that is really troubling them is the loans they took to run their affairs. They are looking at the figures and already know that they face a Herculean task. You may wonder why they need such loans when they don’t embark on executive projects and all they spend money on are recurrent things.

Already, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has vowed to make the two chambers of the National Assembly account for funds allocated to constituency projects, and the figures are scary. Out of the 2,516 projects tracked between 2015 and 2017, 918 of them were not done, 395 are ongoing while 214 of the projects cannot even be located.

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A further breakdown reads as follows: 2015: 436 projects tracked in 16 states, 145 completed, 77 ongoing and 211 not executed at all; 2016: 852 projects in 20 states, 350 completed, 118 ongoing, 41 locations not specified in the budget and 343 not done; 2017: 1,228 projects tracked as at June 2018, 478 completed, 173 in unspecified locations, 200 ongoing, 13 abandoned and 364 not started.

Little wonder the leaders of the two chambers are in desperate need of a candidate that will cover their tracks, and from what Sentry is gathering in Abuja, many of them want that assurance from APC that Lawan as Senate president will not look into the books.

They are indeed reaching out to people they believe have influence on both the Villa and Lawan, promising that once they are assured of their own safety, both Lawan and Hon. Femi Gbajabiala will have their ways as Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives respectively.