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A legal practitioner, Mr Chima Nnaji, has called for a thorough investigation of the allegations of budget padding rocking the House of Representatives.
Mr Nnaji argued that positions were being taken based on sentiment rather than making painstaking efforts to investigate the allegations by the former House Appropriation Committee Chairman, Mr Abdulmumin Jibrin.
“I don’t think that there has been a painstaking effort to thoroughly investigate beyond the cacophony of voices of those who one way or the other, may have been involved in this particular issue, to really sieve the truth to be able now to situate whether there is a criminal something there,” he said.
Ego Problem
The lawyer called for factual evidences to support the allegations but insisted that it should not come from the lawmakers who he said were defending themselves.
“We need to have the facts, not from those who are trying to defend themselves because there is an ego problem now.
“Anybody who is in the National Assembly is on an ego trip, either to defend or rubbish another,” he said.
Budget padding scandal resurfaced months after the budget was passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, with Mr Jibrin submitting a document to back his allegation against some members of the House to four federal government agencies.
He indicted Mr Dogara and 11 others in the document.
The petition was submitted at the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Department of Security Services and the Police headquarters all in Abuja.
During the period the legislative arm of government was deliberating on the budget before its passage, the executive had accused the legislature of adding a project that was not in the document sent to them for approval.
But the legislature insisted that it had only helped the executive to put a poorly documented budget in a better shape.
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