ABUJA, Federal Republic of Nigeria. February 25, 2015 (Leadership) — The Senate, yesterday, accused the minister of finance and coordinating minister of the economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, of failure in implementing the 2014 budget and withholding funds meant for executing capital projects.
The senators made this known during the consideration of the 2015 budget proposals of the various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government as well as their budget performances for 2014.
The lawmakers, who had earlier met behind closed doors for about two hours, concluded that they have to improve their oversight function to ensure that funds are released by the officials of government as and at when it is due this year and to take appropriate steps against any official who deliberately refuses to release funds to execute projects already approved.
A senator who spoke on the executive session on conditions of anonymity said, “Most of the MDAs could not execute any reasonable capital projects this year because the little money released to them by the finance minister was not enough to pay the contractors who had executed projects for them in the past.”
Also of concern to the senators was the meagre allocation of N387 billion for capital projects in the 2015 budget while the recurrent component was allocated over 90 per cent of the N4.3 trillion budget. At the close of the meeting, the lawmakers resolved that the committees should liaise with the various MDAs to cut down on the recurrent votes in order to make more fund available for projects.
Cartoon by Punch
During the 2015 budget defence session between the Ministry of Power and the Senate Committee on Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy, Professor Chinedu Nebo and his counterpart from the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, Musa Mohammed Sada, Okonjo-Iweala again came under fire from the committee members, who accused her of ‘killing’ the nation’s economy through yearly poor funding of capital budgets. A member of the committee, Victor Lar, in what can be said to be a lamentation said, “A situation where we consider a budget and get it approved, only for somebody to sit in an office and refuse to make releases is too bad. Ministers and heads of various agencies who had awarded contracts could not pay but somebody would sit in the comforts of her office and declare a surplus. Is that an economy that is growing?”
“This is simple planlessness, this is frustrating and it cannot go on like this. The presentation by the Minister of steel for instance is an opportunity to raise the revenue profile of the ministry from a non oil sector which would have enhance economic growth was frustrated.
“A serious nation would have encouraged this ministry to ensure that everything required was provided but this is the same ministry that had been subjected to the same envelope system, to the same non releases among others.
“We need to change the way we do things because if we have a problem and you keep on using an approach that has not yielded the desired results, common sense demands that you change the approach.
“We keep doing the same thing wrongly and we expect to get the desired results. It will not work. It is now becoming part of our tradition to get budgets approved as a parliament and someone refused to provide funds for its implementation.”
Similarly, Senator Chris Ngige opined that the economy of Nigeria would collapse totally if the current trend of non release of funds for project execution continues unchecked.
“We as legislators should be interested in putting in place, structures that will enable the country to realise additional sources of revenue apart from the oil sector.”
This is just as Senator Ibrahim Gobir, another member of the committee, stressed the need for the country to harness all available resources in the country by developing its natural resources.
He said, “Our internal debt now is too high, which is over N1 trillion. The foreign debt is also very high. Poverty is very high and to worsen the situation, the naira is being devalued by 30 percent. All these are happening because we cannot sustain production.
“The only way we can move the nation forward economically is to make sure that web diversify our economy to make extra revenue. We budget about N50bn for capital projects and only N20bn would be released at the end of the day because there is no cash backing
“Something is really wrong somewhere, we cannot continue like this. We have to call a spade, a spade. “
At the budget defence session of Lands and Housing, the senators expressed shock when the minister of Lands and Housing, Mrs Akon Eyakenyi, disclosed that her ministry owes contractors over N39bn and that they was no new project in the ministry in 2014 because of the heavy debt burden.
Reacting to the disclosure, members of the committee wondered how the ministry would tackle the housing challenges confronting the country when there was no provision for it to build a single house due to non release of funds.
It was the same story at the Committee on Establishment and Public Service, where the chairman, Senator Aloysius Etuk, described the funds released to MDAs for budget implementations as shameful.
“The rate of budgetary releases is shameful and unacceptable. For us to sit down to plan annual budget and at the end of the day, only 41 per cent performance is implemented is like cutting short the expectations of the people”, Etuk said.
The committee, which took on the Head of Service of the Federation, Federal Housing Staff Loan Board, Public Service Institute of Nigeria, Administrative Staff College of Nigeria and Public Civil Service Reform Bureau, also expressed concern over zero capital budget in the 2015 fiscal year.
Head of Service of the Federation, Danladi Kefesi, told the committee while making his presentation that N11.5bn was budgeted for the Head of Service of the Federation in 2014.
He explained that out of the amount, N5.1bn was budgeted for personnel cost, N1.9bn for overhead cost and N4.1billion for capital cost.
