The Abia State House of Assembly has declared that it has disappointed Abians who expected the House explode in commotion due to its bi-partisan composition.

Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Martins Azubuike, made the declaration Tuesday while x-raying the performance of the Abia Legislature in the past one year. He warned that Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) which fail to strictly implement the 2016 budget would be sanctioned.

Unlike the 5th Abia House of Assembly which was an all-PDP affair, the 6th House, inaugurated on June 11, 2015 was composed of two political parties with the PDP then having a lean majority of 13 members, leaving APGA with a minority of 11 legislators. This fuelled speculations that the House might not know peace given the post-election frosty relationship between both parties in the state. However, after the tribunal cases and rerun polls, the PDP posted a comfortable majority of 15 members while APGA was left with nine lawmakers.

But Azubuike, who hosted journalists at his Lodge in Umuahia on Tuesday evening, said he and his colleagues have failed those who expected that the opposition would be the anchor for rancour in the Abia legislator as the Assembly has been progressing in harmony since its inauguration.

He identified patriotism, maturity and experience as factors responsible for the peace and harmony reigning in the Assembly.

Said he: “People were expecting commotion because of the opposition, even though opposition does not mean opposing any and everything. I want to report that we have a very healthy Assembly. I want to say that the expectation of the public was that this (presence of opposition) is going to hamper legislation, is going to be an impediment to governance; these people are going to be fighting, any and every other day. I think the 6th Assembly has disappointed the Abia public in that respect.”

Shedding light on steps taken to forestall anything that may hamper the smooth relationship among the lawmakers and functioning of the Assembly, the Speaker said: “At the very inception, we sat like brothers and sisters and talked to ourselves, that the parties have been left outside the Assembly gate.

“The parties are like vehicles that brought us to the Assembly and to that extent, they have fulfilled their own responsibility. For us now in the Assembly, it is Abia first, thereafter, when you leave the Assembly premises, you can go and do your party assignment and members understood that and have taken that advice with all sense of maturity, with all sense of responsibility. That has brought the healthy relationship we enjoy in the Assembly today because when issues come to the fore, members will look at it from the point of view of how will it affect Abia, first; secondly, how will it affect my constituency and when that is taken care of, you discover that parties are not factored into our decision making.

“I also want to say that we have members who have cut their teeth in various spheres of life before coming to the Assembly and they are bringing those levels of experiences here in what we do in the Assembly. So, to that extent, we have been able to manage the bipartisan nature of the 6th Assembly. I do not call it opposition, I call it that we are two parties in working for the progress of the state through the institution of the parliament.”

Rt. Hon. Azubuike spoke of efforts being made by the House to ensure that the 2016 budget would be strictly implemented, stressing that defaulters would be adequately punished.

According to him, “One of the things we want to do is to have a Committee of the House on Legislative Compliance because one of the things we have noticed is that a good number of our resolutions have gone unimplemented and a few days ago, we sat back and looked at them and said maybe, we need to empanel a committee that would ensure that every decision from the House is implemented by an appropriate MDA of government saddled with that.

“Our experience before now has been after passage of the budget into law, we wait for the executive to come for the next year for us to ask how did you fare with the previous Appropriation Law.

“We have moved away from that to ensure that every activity of government is tailored to the Appropriation Law. If there are things that are coming up which the government did not advert their attention to as at the time the appropriation law was made, that an appropriate supplementary bill is brought to take care of it.

“And very soon, by next quarter, the House Committee on Appropriation and House Committee on Public Accounts will begin to visit the MDAs to see what they have done with the budget documents, what aspects of the budget has been implemented and what hasn’t been implemented.

“One of the sanctions we will impose by next year’s budget is to blacklist every MDA that doesn’t implement the previous year’s budget, especially if the lack of implementation is not as a result of paucity of funds. If the funds were provided and they were used to do things that are not in the budget, leaving out things in the budget, then the House will impose appropriate sanctions for that and one of the sanctions could be giving a zero-allocation to the MDA in the subsequent budget.”

The Speaker announced that the House received 17 bills comprising executive and private member bills, with 11 of them passed into law and adopted six resolutions. He said the bills were designed to improve the economic fortunes of the state and bring about a revolution in agriculture.

•Photo shows Abia Speaker, Rt. Hon. Martins Azubuike.