Senators quarrel over Tinubu’s administration housing programme
By Tunde Opalana
In what look like a partisan quarrel, two senators, Abdul Ningi and Jimoh Ibrahim on Wednesday openly disagreed on the implementation of the Renewed Hope Housing project of the Tinubu administration.
Both senators who are members of the Senate Committee on Land, Housing and Urban Development engaged in a war of words during the budget defence of the federal ministry of Housing and Urban Development at the National Assembly.
The bone of contention which sounded political was the feasibility of the Renewed Hope Housing project under the management of the ministry.
Immediately after the minister of state, Rt. Hon. Yusuf Abdullahi had presented the 2024 budget performance of the ministry, chairman of the committee, Senator Aminu Tambuwal declared the floor open for members to comment.
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Senator Abdul Ningi a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) representing Bauchi Central first said the minister cannot proceed to present figures for the 2025 budget because he has questions to answer on last year’s budget.
According to him, the ministry has a sum of N20 billion unaccounted for in the 2024 estimates . He added that the ministry gave figures of the capital component without the overhead component.
He then queries the feasibility of the Renewed Hope Housing project.
Ningi said he was not aware of the Renewed Hope Housing project and that none of the 7522 housing projects is located anywhere in Bauchi State.
He questioned the spate of geographical spread of the programme being coordinated by the federal ministry.
Hardly had he stopped spoken that Senator Jimoh Ibrahim, a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) representing Ondo South said no one could claim not to have heard of or known about the Renewed Hope Housing programme.
“The Renewed Hope Housing programme is duly on course. The programme is fully known to Nigerians,” he said.
Ibrahim claimed that the federal government is meant to run the programme through the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and that if it has not gotten to a state does not mean that it is selective.
Further advancing reasons for why the programme has not spread to all states of the federation, Senator Ibrahim said the federal government’s 2024 budget still has six more months to run, therefore Ningi could not claim that nothing will be done in his state.
A quick intervention by Senator Kelvin Chukwu from Ebonyi State doused the tension when he suggested to the committee chairman that the minister should be allowed to answer posers raised by Senator Ningi before further comment from any member of the committee.
Senator Seriake Dickson (Bayelsa West) cautioned against reading partisan meaning to the concern raised by Ningi.
He as well said there is no presence of the Renewed Hope Housing project in Bayelsa State .
Dickson went ahead to suggest that federal government has to be more concerned with mass rural housing programme because most of his constituents live in rural areas.
The budget defence session was quickly adjourned when the minister of state Yusuf Abdullahi could not differentiate between the Renewed Hope Housing project and the National Housing Programme run by the ministry.
The minister said he was just two months in office and has not been acquainted with the workings of the ministry because he was absent from office for four weeks on health ground.
The chairman, Senator Tambuwal said the committee would have preferred the substantive minister, Arc.Ahmed Kangiwa to personally present the 2025 budget. He is away in Dubai on the entourage of President Bola Tinubu.
The committee therefore, asked the minister of state to put his act together and come back next week Tuesday for the budget defence
