Rep vows not to seek re-election, claims FG has failed Nigerians

The debate on the 2018 budget in the House of Representatives took a dramatic twist, on Wednesday, with a member from Kano State, Hon. Bashir Babale, vowing not to re-contest for election because the Federal Government has failed Nigerians.
Hon. Babale, who is representing the Minjibir/Ungogo Federal Constituency of Kano State, in his contribution to the debate on the 2018 Appropriation Bill, announced that he did not wish to continue to be part of a leadership that has not kept its part of the social contract it signed with Nigerians.
“Let me inform the House that I have no intention of coming back to the House. We didn’t achieve much with the capital aspect of the 2017 budget. In 2015, we entered a social contract with Nigerians. When we leave here what would be said about what we have done here?”, he asked.
However, Hon. Babale, who is the Deputy Chairman of the House Committee on National Planning and Economic Development, blamed the Federal Government’s alleged lacklustre performance for the country’s dwindling revenue which has contributed to the recurrent expenditure remaining higher than capital expenditure.
“Because of poor revenue generation… the question is what have you done to increase revenue generation?
“Yes, Mr. President came and talked about the huge chunk voted for capital expenditure. But we need to make a distinction between administrative and developmental component of the budget. Some ministries spend 300 million out of the 500 million voted for capital projects on administrative training”.
The lawmaker opined that Nigeria’s reliance on oil revenue makes the basic assumptions in the 2018 budget ‘highly unrealistic’.
Babale continued, “Another issue we need to look at is the projected oil production of 2.5million barrel per day and the current oil price of $62. We need to ask ourselves, why is the oil price currently at this price? There are two reasons, geo-political upheaval in the Middle East. If today, we have some peace in this region, the oil price would come down and the second reason is the little peace we are having in the Niger Delta, if today there is any crisis in the Niger delta then we are going to have a drop in the production volume.
“I have not seen any step taken by the government to address this uncertainty, yes there is the ogoni cleap up…”, he said
He also accused the Federal Government on not doing enough to diversify the economy through agriculture.
“Little has been done on the issue of agriculture. I have listened to the minister of agriculture talk about the several hectres of land set aside for the irrigation farming but I asked the Chairman of Committee on Agriculture to supply the list or information on the hectres.
“This is a clarion call for us to do the needfull, we have till 2019 to deliver the promises we made to Nigerians. So this budget and 2019 budget is the only hope we have. We need to shine a microscopic light on the budget”, he added.
But Deputy Speaker, Yussuff Lasun, who presided over Thursday’s plenary, urged the lawmaker to properly consider his future in politics.
He asked Babale if he was emulating another member,  Abubakar Chika, whose letter of resignation from politics has gone viral online.
“I hope you are have not been subjected to peer pressure, because Chika just announced his resignation from politics and I know you two are friends”, Lasun said.
|Sun