House of Representatives Monday said the 2021 budget proposal of N13.08 trillion currently before the parliament is incapable of lifting Nigeria from the current economic recession.
Nigeria at the weekend entered into the second recession in four years, following the announcement by the National Bureau of Statistics that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) recorded negative growth of 3.62 percent in the third quarter of 2020.
Awaji-Inombek Abiante (PDP, Rivers) who raised concerns over the inability of the budget to address the recession during a meeting of the House Committee on Science and Technology said the documents have allocation flaws that should be corrected.
Abiante was furious over the absence of the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, and the Director-General, Budget Office, Ben Akabueze at the meeting to explain why capital projects in the 2020 budget of the Ministry of Science and Technology and others were not getting adequate funding.
The lawmaker argued that trivial activities got 100% funding while capital projects that were people-orientated suffered more.
Abiante said: “It won’t be very appropriate for their own views not to be reflected. For having this opportunity, I want it on record that it probably could have been an intended absence to avoid scrutiny of what had been presented. If there had been a written document before us, allowing the DG, probably, would have taken a few questions because to my mind, having looked at the budget of some agencies that we supervise as the Committee on Science and Technology as well as some other agencies supervised by some other Committees, I want to honestly say that the budget office is one of the greatest problems we have in this country.
“What we have before us is no budget. We have looked at it. And if we continue like this, then we know where the problem of this country lies. Somebody may have been misinforming or even ill-advising Mr. President. I give you an instance, the parastatal was before us requesting for about N1billion to have laboratory established and all they could get in 2020 budget was N20 million for something that will turn around the economy of the country, something that will help to stop the importation of adhesives that are used in the leather industry. Who is causing us this problem? The Budget Office”.
On his part, another member of the Committee, Stanley Olajide from Oyo State appealed to his colleagues to give the officials a second chance, hence they were entitled to a fair hearing which the Parliament espouses.
“I will tell the representatives of the Minister and the DG, this is a serious issue to address all the issues of Nigeria. I will not take a hardline because I think we want to hear from the DG and the Minister directly. But there are a lot of questions to be answered. Please, I think we should go ahead and write a second letter”, he submitted.
Another member of the Committee, Julius Ihonvbere (APC, Edo) said the lawmakers have questions that will benefit other Committees.
“How does an agency of government get 9% funding in terms of release for capital and there are others that have received 100% in Nigeria? We believe that there should be ways in allocating responsibilities to leaders of MDAs so that they can respond to burning issues. Some of these issues are time-bound. And we hope when they have another opportunity, they will handle it better”, Ihonvbere said.
Chairman of the Committee, Beni Lar (PDP, Plateau) said existing projects should be finished before embarking on new ones.
“I think the main point here is that we want to complete projects that have been started. Some key projects in science and technology allocated some ridiculous amount of money. Not even enough to buy papers. We should have a system that will help them to finish the existing projects before starting new ones”, she said.
