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BUDGET PADDING: AN ILLEGALITY OR LEGALITY

Anyone following the imbroglio at the National Assembly may have no reason than to pity our dear country men and women who are walking along the streets of our cities, hoping for a better country where they can at least see what to eat. Instead of the normal
legislative process which the house is constitutional known for, the only news coming from the National Assembly particularly the House of Representative is about padding.  Ordinarily one is tempted to ask the one question, what is padding? Padding comes from the verb word pad which literally means to fill or cover something in order to protect or shape it; however from the context of legislative process, padding is a means to defraud by adding false items to expenses, claim or bill.
There have been numerous arguments even from lawyers whether padding is a crime or not. The argument against been that padding was not expressly mentioned in either the Criminal or the Penal Codes. While padding is not listed as offence in our legislative enactment nothing stops a good interpreter of a law to situate such offence among such classes of offence as abuse of office, diversion and misappropriation of public funds or even embezzlement.
If we agree that padding is a situation where some members of the house go behind and add items of expenditure to what has already been agreed upon, then common sense should tell us that that it is wrong, what stops members from approaching or working together with members of the executive arm of government in order to factor in their constituencies. One will draw an inference that this has been going on in the National Assembly unnoticed and may gradually have become a norm, thus one has to appreciate the present government whose body language may have given some people the courage to open up. For justice to be done everybody who is part of this political embarrassment should be brought to book so that it will serve as a deterrent to will be offenders. ROLAND UWAKWE 

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