By Our Reporters
It’s very unlikely that State House Comptroller Lucy Nakyobe will in future face anymore tough questioning by MPs sitting on the relevant Parliamentary Committees. This comes after a compromise deal that was curiously reached between State House and MPs who had made it a habit to complicate Accounting Officer Nakyobe’s life by asking hard accountability questions each time she came before them to defend and justify her never ending requests for supplementary funding. In one of the recent engagements, MPs suggested a win-win situation which the relieved State House delegation members delightedly accepted. How does it work? One of the MPs suggested a way forward when he casually said to the State House delegation thus “you guys working with Mzee really amuse me; you keep coming to us and we get abused by voters for being gullible to your requests for additional funding as if you think we don’t have pressures in the constituency.” The MP then suggested: “Why don’t you give us a scholarships deal so that we are also able to appease our voters in return so that we increase chances for our re-electability as we pass your endless requests for supplementary funding?” The discussion then proceeded with other MPs giving ideas how this can perfectly work. One of the targeted committees is chaired by an NRM female MP and its members were given this offer as a pilot to see how the same can be extended to more State House relevant committees. The State House delegation offered to accept names of beneficiaries recommended by MPs who sit on this uniquely very relevant committee. At first every MP on this NRM-dominated committee was allowed to recommend 5 beneficiaries as an act of political patronage to their respective constituents. The names were duly passed on to the State House Comptroller who ensured their inclusion on the list of State House Scholarship beneficiaries mostly kids at University. After letters confirming the offer to each of the five names each MP recommended were dispatched and received by the legislators, a bonus offer of two more names was announced to the wild excitement of the MPs each of whom now has 7 beneficiaries on the State House scholarship list. It’s expected that with this compromise deal, MPs on the relevant committees will now ton down on their criticisms of State House whenever faced with requests for supplementary funding. To avoid a scenario where each of the more than 400 MPs demands the same scholarship package for his or her constituency that members totally conceal this information for fear that the resultant endless requests by other MPs could make things very complicated for the State House bureaucrats.
