House of Representatives Speaker, Dr Yakubu Dogara, and Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Monday disagreed with each other over the constitutionality of constituency projects at a national summit in Abuja.
The former Lagos State governor said constituency projects were unconstitutional, while the Speaker insisted that they were constitutional.
They were speaking at a national summit on Political Representation and Constituency Relations and Intervention Services in Abuja.
Fashola opined that the basic constitutional responsibility of lawmakers was to make laws for good governance and not to carry out constituency projects.
Fashola said, “In trying to find a legal framework for constituency projects, we must first look at those things that the National Assembly has powers to legislate upon.
“So we must avoid rowdiness and must be mindful of misplacing the jurisdictions with respect to other tiers of government.”
But in his keynote address, Dogara said the concept of constituency projects was derived from the constitution.
The Speaker added that it was borrowed from developed democracies around the world to enhance equal distribution of projects in the various constituencies of the country.
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