THE House of Representatives yesterday stuck to its guns, insisting that President Goodluck Jonathan should sack the Director-General of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), Arunma Oteh.
The development came a few days after Jonathan forwarded bills for amendment to the 2013 Appropriation Act and the Subsidy Re-investment Programme (SURE-P) to the National Assembly, specifically raising issues on a clause that seems to prevent SEC from spending funds in the 2013 fiscal year, a development the President said would spell doom for the capital market.
Specifically, both chambers of the National Assembly had in their separate resolutions asked the President to remove Oteh as the DG of SEC, saying she lacked the requisite qualifications to head the commission, failure of which the parliament would have nothing to do with the SEC.
The House of Representatives had last year launched investigation into the near-collapse of the Nigeria's capital market.
Clause 10 of the 2013 Appropriation Act as passed by the National Assembly reads: "All revenue however described, including all fees received, fines, grants, budgetary provisions and all internally and externally-generated revenue, shall not be spent by the Security and Exchange Commission for recurrent or capital purposes or for any other matters, nor liabilities thereon incurred except with prior appropriation and approval by the National Assembly."
But in his reaction to the clause, Jonathan stated that "considering the fact that the budget of SEC does not form part of the core 2013 Federal Budget as presented to the National Assembly, I believe that this clause ought not to have been inserted in the 2013 Appropriation Act in the first place. Secondly, the import of the clause is tantamount to shutting down the business of the Commission with a potential negative impact on the capital market."
However, the House, in a fresh resolution on a motion moved under matters of urgent public importance yesterday by Deputy Minority Whip of the House, Garba Datti, has mandated its Committee on Legislative Compliance to monitor the compliance and report back to it within 21 days.
Datti had expressed concerns that the inaction of the President was a blatant disregard of the resolutions of the House of Representatives, and that most of these resolutions, though products of motions, hinge on fundamental public duty placed on public officers by the Constitution under the Fundamental Objectives and Directive principles of State Policy.
His words: "The motion urging the removal of Arunma Oteh, for instance, hinged on the fact that her appointment as Director-General of the Securities Exchange Commission was a gross violation of the Commission's Act as she does not possess the minimum professional qualification prescribed for appointment to that position.
"Recently, the Executive has adopted the dangerous and vexatious approach of picking and choosing the implementation of resolutions of the Senate on the dismissal of Abdulrasheed Maina which was passed much later in time while still disregarding the long pending motion on the removal of the Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission."
