From Jonas Ezieke, Abuja
An Ad-hoc Committee of the House of Representatives investigating many unexecuted but funded projects in the annual appropriations Act from 2015 to date has lambasted the Director-General of the Sheda Science and Technology Complex Abuja Prof P.C Onyemulukwe over what it said is an astronomical increase of his agency’s annual budgets without concrete projects executed by it.
Chairman of the House Committee Hon. Abubakar Makki and other committee members had grilled the DG and other officials of the agency over the 2015 to 2021 budgets particularly as it relaes to capital projects funds budgeted and released to it by the federal government.
While probing the DG on the agency’s annual budgets for the period under review, he said that the budgets of the agency is undergone what he called astronomical increase in budgeting by it and many Ministries Departments and Agencies MDAs are also guilty of it.
The lawmaker and under committee members had uncovered a geometrical increase of the budget of the agency from N20 million in 2015 to N2.1 billion in 2021 when the there was no ongoing project being executed by it.
A member of the probe panel Hon. Yusuf Gagdi (Plateau, PDP) had uncovered many repetitions in the budget saying that the agency budgeted N10 million for the supply of liquids in 2015 but it gulped down N15. 1 million in this line item asking why the over- payment.
He said, “How come we appropriated N10 million but you accessed N15 million. Did you apply for variation?”.
Another committee member Hon. Femi Bamisile (Ekiti, APC) also noted that in the 2020 budget of the agency most of its contractors were doing the same thing.
But the DG explained and
blamed the issue rasied by lawmakers on envelop system of budgeting by federal government saying that what the agency usually do is to increase its budget every year when the money earmarked for a particular project in the budget is not approved by parliament.
He also said that the agency had received N20 million in 2015 which was increased in subsequent years but the funds were not totally relreleased to it by the finance authorities adding that in 2021, it was increased to N2.1 billion by National Assembly.
Nontheless, the Committee Chairman Hon.Abubakar Makki who frowned at these repetitions and other issues in the budget said that Nigeria is leaking due to such unwholesome practices by most government agencies.
He also demanded that the agency provides the probe panel with seven days, its Medium Term Sector Strategy MTSS document and other important documents to aid the committee in its investigations.
