From Fred Itua, Abuja
The Senate Committee on Army, yesterday, asked Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed; Director General, Budget Office, Ben Akabueze and Chief of Army Staff, Attahiru Ibrahim to appear before it next Tuesday to explain details of funds so far released to the army to fight insurgency, banditry and other forms of insecurity from 2019 till date.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Army, Mohammed Ali Ndume, stated this during a meeting with officials of the Federal Ministry of Finance.
He expressed disappointment that the minister shunned the invitation of his panel despite the importance of the issue at stake.
“Honestly, we are not happy that minister of finance is not here today.There is nothing that is more important that she could be attending to than the problem of insecurity all over Nigeria at the moment. We were blaming the military, but the soldiers are claiming that they have no equipment, arms and ammunition to work with because there is no money to buy them. We have invited the minister now to explain why her ministry was not funding the operations of the army and she is not here. This is not acceptable.”
Permanent Secretary, Special Duties, Ministry of Finance, Aliyu Shinkafi told the committee that N75 billion was appropriated and released in 2019 while additional funds of N7billion appropriated from the service wide vote was also released 100 per cent. The sum of N2.5 billion was also released in 2019.
“In 2020, N75 billion was appropriated, but N74.99 billion was released. In the current year, N100 billion had been appropriated and we have released N19.4 billion for the first quarter. Just yesterday, we released N19.95 billion for the second quarter.”
Ndume, however, brought out a letter from Chief of Defence Staff where he said military authorities complained that they had a shortfall as far as releases from the finance ministry was concerned.
“The letter from the Defence Headquarters on the funding of Operations Lafiya Dole is claiming that they have a shortfall of N50billion in terms of releases and requested us to do a follow up on the matter.”