Impeachment: Jonathan bows to Reps on budget implementation.

There were strong indications, on Friday, that the Presidency has launched moves to stave off the recent  impeachment threat from the House of Representatives to President Gooduck Jonathan.

The move coincided with  a claim by a principal officer of the House (names withheld) that the threat was actually a ruse, as at no time did  members of the House take such a decision.

The Minority Leader in the House, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila had initiated the motion to the effect that the president be issued the threat on account of alleged poor implementation of the 2012 Federal Appropriation Act as passed by the National Assembly and signed into law by the president.

The issue has generated a lot of controversy with the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), through its Deputy National Chairman, Dr. Sam Jaja, on Thursday in Abuja, promising not to compel the House to drop the impeachment threat.

The House gave the president until September 18 to achieve a 100 per cent budget implementation, failure which it could commence impeachment procedures against him.

We however, learnt that the Presidency had, through the appropriate ministry, taken concrete measures to convince stakeholders that it was duly implementing the budget as passed by the legislature.

Specifically, it was learnt  that upon the impeachment threat, the Coordinating Minister of Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had started releasing budgetary allocations to Ministries, Departments and Agencies [MDAs].

Further investigations revealed that the impeachment threat was actually designed by the House to ensure that the Federal government Ministries, Departments and Agencies got their allocations.

This became necessary because various MDAs had allegedly had cause to complain to House committees’ chairmen during oversight functions to them that their allocations were not forthcoming as at when due.

Meanwhile, there are indications that the House might have softened its stance on the alleged impeachment threat over Jonathan’s alleged poor implementation of the 2012 budget.

Investigations indicated that the whole ploy of the threat was a move by the House to have the executive to key into the implementation the 2012 budget.

In fact, one of the key members  of the House told us in confidence that the  threat was never part of the House resolutions when the issue of 2012 budget was debated.

According to him, “the impeachment thing was not part of our resolutions during the debate of the 2012 budget, and I wonder why it should now be an issue. If there is the reason for it,we will go for it’’.

But the source, on Friday, while debunking the threat added, “we are not plotting against the Mr. President as being rumoured; we are only demanding the full implementation of the budget as passed the National Assembly and assented to by the Mr. President himself. In fact,  after our adjournment, Mr. President invited us for a dinner. Do you wine and dine with your enemies? No.”