SAN FRANCISCO, September 19, (THEWILL) – The Senate on Thursday summoned the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to appear before its committee on Finance.
She is to defend reported statements credited to the Minister of State for Finance, Dr Yerima Ngama, that the 2013 budget was “over-bloated”, leaving it practically unimplementable.
The Minister is also to defend the level of implementation of the 2013 budget.
The resolution was sequel to a motion sponsored by Deputy Leader of the Senate, Senator Abdul Ningi, and 13 other Senators titled “2013 Budget and Alleged Over Bloated Revenue Estimates”.
Consequently, the Senate mandated its Committees on Finance and Appropriation to find out the reason behind the decline in revenue generation and report back to the plenary in three weeks.
According to Senator Ningi in his lead debate; “The utterances of the Minister of State for Finance, which is clearly targeted to blackmail the National Assembly, considering all the revenue variables are within the target expectations and such unguarded pronouncements is capable of sending serious negative signals to the Nigerian citizens and indeed the international community.”
In the motion, Ningi declared the total release to date (third quarter) as follows: Capital (N855,141,000,000); Approved budget (N1,591,657,000,000); difference (N 736,466,000,00).
However, the Senate President, David Mark,has chastised the various committees in the Senate for failing to take their oversight functions seriously, saying this is a big wake up call for the Senate.
According to Mark, the various committees in the Senate ought to have found out if monies are released to various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and the level of implementation of the budgets.
“This is a big wake up call to all of us here. Our various committees ought to have found out if money is released to the various MDA and agencies and the level of implementation of the various budgets .If the committee is doing their duty, we will not have to wait till the end of the year to find out if budgets are implemented,” Mark said.
He therefore directed that “Every committee should find out quarterly the level of budget implementation in various agencies and also know the level of reduction in revenues.”
According to Mark, ” There are so many MDAs, every agency has a Committee performing oversight functions over them, it is difficult to indict anybody now, nobody can come up with facts of the budget implementation and we want to know the level of budget implementation so that at the end of the year, we will know if the budget has been implemented or not.”
BY EMMA UCHE, ABUJA
