The Sun News On-line

Following scrutiny of the 2009 budget by the House of Representatives Committee, the proposal of the Ministry of Interior to celebrate this year’s National Day with a sum of N40 million was rejected by the House Committee on Interior.

Chairman of the committee, Jerry Manwe, told the Minister of Interior, Major General Godwin Abbe [retd] and the Permanent Secretary, Jeff Nwosu, that the amount was outrageous in the face of austerity measures introduced into the budget.

Last year, he noted that the sum of N16 million was expended for the annual event, wondering the reasons for the surge in the sum earmarked for the event for this year.

The committee also raised eyebrow on the proposal of N48 million for maintaining of the ministry vehicles throughout the year, in addition to N102 million for what it described as Other Miscellaneous.
Taking a cursory look at the budget, the lawmakers observed that N102 million was expended, out of the N130 million released to the ministry in last year’s budget, whereas, N158 million was proposed for the national event.

Not satisfied with discrepancies in the budget and inadequate details, Jerry Manwe asked the officials to return in a later date with cogent specifications of expenditure.
Said he: “I want to say that the Permanent Secretary will have to go back and to resubmit to this committee details of what constitutes Other Miscellaneous, and we need to have it so that we can look at it.”

Attempt by Nwosu to convince the committee that the subhead constituted among other things, sitting allowances, publicity, medical expenses, welfare packages, inspection allowances and media activities were rebuffed by the lawmakers, who argued that the listed items are already built-in in other subheads in the budget.

Nwosu later explained that the ministry never knew that the lawmakers would be asking such probing questions.

“If we knew what they (lawmakers) were going to ask us, we will have come with them. As a matter of fact, there are some documents that we have to go and get.
“So I think it is a matter of getting the information that we have. The document that they have was dated in September (2008), but now we are in 2009, so we have up to date records, up till December 31.
“So we have to go and put all these things together and come back to them and give them clearer details.“

The committee also queried the ministry over the inclusion of N109 million trapped in the distressed All States Trust Bank over 5 years in the revenue projection for the year.
The minister was directed to liaise with Oceanic Bank that acquired the distressed bank, and ensure that the money earmarked to pay pensioners was retrieved.

In his remarks, Abe said lack of understanding of the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) law posed a major challenge to the ministry last year, and assured, however, that the ministry was gaining understanding of the law to enable it meet targets for this year.