This follows allegations that National Assembly Joint Appropriation Committee diverted the money to other sectors as it claimed that the project was not in the budget sent by the executive.
In a statement, Monday, Ashafa said the project was included during budget defence.
He said although the rail line project was not in the original document presented by the executive, the Minister of Transport Rotimi Amaechi, sent a supplementary copy of the ministry’s budget to the committee which contained the said project.
He said Amaechi noted that the amount needed for the counterpart funding for both the Lagos to Kano and Lagos to Calabar rail modernisation projects was N120billion – N60billion per project.
Sen Ashafa said although his committee did not agree with all the changes made in the subsequent document by the appropriation committee, it accepted the inclusion of the Lagos to Calabar project and appropriated funds for it without exceeding the envelope provided for the ministry.
“In so doing, the committee observed that the Lagos to Kano rail rehabilitation project had been allocated the sum of N52billion Naira against the sum of 60billion which the Minister requested as counterpart funding while no allocation whatsoever was made for the Lagos to Calabar rail line,” he said.
To this effect, he said, the sum of N54 billion that was discovered by his committee to be floating in the budget of the Ministry of Transportation as presented by the Executive was injected into augmenting the funds needed for counterpart funding of both projects (Lagos to Kano and Lagos to Calabar Rail modernisation).
“As at the time, the committee defended its report before the senate committee on Appropriation. The Lagos to Calabar rail modernisation project was therefore included in the Senate Committee on Land Transports recommendation to the Senate Committee on Appropriations.
“With regard to the Idu to Kaduna rail completion, the Senate Committee on Land Transport did not interfere with what was provided for in the budget as sent by the executive, being approximately N18Billion hence I am equally surprised to read on the pages of the newspapers that the amount allocated to the said project was reduced by N8billion,”he said.
Also while briefing journalists yesterday, the spokesman of the House of Representatives Rep Abdulrazak Sa’ad Namdas (APC, Adamawa) said the Calabar-Lagos rail project was not part of what President Muhammadu Buhari presented to the joint session of the National Assembly on December 22, 2015.
He said it was the minister of transportation Rotimi Amaechi that came with the proposal “through the back door” during budget defence. He said that only the president is constitutionally empowered to present budget estimates to the National Assembly.
“I want to state clearly that there was nothing like Calabar-Lagos rail project in the document the president presented to us. We couldn’t have removed what was not there from the beginning. It was the minister of transport that brought the matter after the president had presented the budget.
“We can’t accept anything on budget from a minister except from the president himself as provided in the constitution. It is all part of the padding that they were talking about. I think they want to set us against the people,” he said.
