Senators accuse Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of withholding funds for capital projects

Senators in the Federal House of Assembly on Tuesday accused the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of refusing to release funds for capital projects as at when due, thereby contributing to the poor implementation of the budget.

The senators, who met behind closed doors for close to two hours, expressed their anger at the minister, for encouraging poor budget implementation.

Sources in the Senate House of Assembly said that the lawmakers were angered by non release of budgeted funds by Okonjo-Iweala, a trend they said could lead to total collapse of the economy.

The lawmakers, however, resolved to pass the budget before the Presidential election scheduled to hold on March 28.

The Senators, who spoke under the condition of anonymity expressed belief that the relevant committees would take appropriate steps to enhance the quality of their oversight in the course of the year.

One of them said:  “All of us are not happy that most of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) could not execute any reasonable capital projects this year because the little money released to them by the  finance minister was not enough to pay the contractors, who had executed projects for them in the past.”

The Senators also raised the concern that only the sum of N387 billion was allocated for capital projects in the 2015 budget.

It was gathered that the session agreed that committees should liaise with the various MDAs to cut down on the ratio of recurrent votes to capital votes.

At the budget defense session which took place also on Tuesday, a member of the committee on Power, Mines and Steel, Senator Victor Lar, openly expressed anger at what he described as, “A situation where we considered a budget, have it approved, then somebody sits in an office and refuses to make releases.

 “This is is frustrating and it cannot go on like this. The presentation by the Minister of Steel for instance is an opportunity to raise the revenue profile of the ministry from a non oil sector, which would have enhanced economic growth.

“A serious nation would have encouraged this ministry to ensure that everything required was provided but this is the same ministry that had been subjected to the same envelope system, to the same non releases among others.

“We need to change the way we do things because if we have a problem and you keep on using an approach that has not yielded the desired results, common sense demands that you change the approach.

“We keep doing the same thing wrongly and we expect to get the desired results. It will not work. It is now becoming part of our tradition to get budgets approved as a parliament and someone refused to provide funds for its implementation.”

Another member of the Committee, Senator Ibrahim Gobir, also harped on the need for the country to harmonise and develop its available resources.

He stated that the nation must address the problem of internal debt, which according to him is too high.