THE House of Representatives, yesterday, queried the Minister
of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Accountant General of the
Federation, Mr Jonah Otunla and Director-General of the Budget Office,
Dr Bright Okogwu, over the snail-like pace of implementation of the 2012
budget.
The Reps also accused the Federal Government of discrimination and
the selective nature of releases to Ministries, Departments and
Agencies, MDAs, which had largely affected implementation.
Also yesterday, the Minister of Finance suggested that there was need
for Nigeria to have at least $10 billion on its Excess Crude Account as
most countries in Africa now have crude.
Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Mr John Enoh, in
his address at the meeting with relevant stakeholders, expressed concern
on the low level of implementation of the budget, adding that most of
the MDAs complained that funds were not released at at appropriate time.
Enoh said: “If money is not released and some of these ministries are
complaining to our committees that are going on oversight, we need to
see how we could strengthen the implementation. We like to have an
updated documents to show that over N400 billion had been released.”
The chairman said the Ministry of Niger Delta got 50 per cent of its
allocation but the question is: what can be responsible for that? One is
worried because reports get to us from our standing committee that
there were so many on-going projects that these ministries and
parastatals can utilise their funds on.
He said: “I can tell you that Ministry of Water Resources got an
allocation of N70 billion but got just about N10 billion, likewise the
Ministry of Land and Housing, of N42 billion allocated to it, got N6
billion.”
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