The Senate has said the non-budgetary provision of funds to the Hydro Electric Power Producing Areas Development Commission (HYPADEC) has inflicted pains on the people of the areas.
The Upper Chamber is distrubed that in the past seven years, since 2012 till date, no budgetary provision was made to the commission and that the situation has caused enormous hardship.
Consequently, the Senate has mandated its Committee on Legislative Compliance to probe the delay in the takeoff of HYPADEC, after nine years of its passage into law.
Specifically, the Senate has charged the committee to investigate and ascertain the utilization of the sum of about N612 million appropriated so far to the Commission.
The Senate took the decision sequel to a motion by Senator Muhammad Enagi Bima (APC, Niger South).
Urging the Federal Government to urgently make funds available to the commission in the 2020 budget, it further charged the Senate committee to report progress on the matter in two weeks.
Leading the debate, Bima noted that the Act establishing HYPADEC charged the Commission with the responsibility of managing ecological menace due to operation of dams and other hydroelectric power activities.
He informed that the Act was passed by the Seventh National Assembly in 2010 and signed into law by President Goodluck Jonathan.
Lamenting the the inability of the Commission to takeoff which has exposed communities within the area of operation of hydroelectric dams in Nigeria to serious ecological challenges, Bima said the areas are affected by flooding, loss of lives, health hazards and loss of farmlands.
He revealed that the sums of N354,570,637; N247,500,000 and N10,106,632 were only appropriated in 2011, 2014 and 2015 budgets, respectively, for the Commission.
Solomon Ayado, Abuja
