The Senate Committee on information on Tuesday took the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Muhammed to task over how he ramped up expenditure of over N109m he claimed to have expended on international and local travels during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
Appearing before the Senate Committee on Information and National Orientation to defend the 2021 budget and give highlights of 2020 budget performance, Alhaji Mohammed was asked to explain how N19m out N43m budgeted for international travels was spent as the country was on lockdown for almost six months.
He was also grilled on how he spent N90m out of N96m budgeted for local travels during the lockdown when inter-state travels were banned.
Senator Ezennwa Onyewuchi from Imo State asked: “Let me take you on this your 2020 overhead. You have here on local travels and transport appropriated is N30m you expended N23m on local transport you recieved N96m as appropriated and released you expended N90m.
“On International travels and transport you had N43m you expended N19m.
“So I am wondering during this period of lockdown where nobody was able to go to any country during the 2020 appropriation how were you able to embark on international travels and you expended N19m?
“So we need to look at that critically and you also tell us here in parliament how you were able to do that?
“I am sure you will remember you did a lot of enlightenment programme on this and I am sure you will remember that most of us were prevented from moving into other states so I don’t know how you also had the luxury of spending the entire amount that was appropriated on those travels so those are the information we need to get from your expenditure.”
And the minister responded: “You will notice that N43m was budgeted but less than 40% was spent precisely because of the COVID-19 and before then remember that we had travelled to attend several international summits starting UNWTO conference, UNESCO in Spain, in the UK.”
The expenditure, he disclosed, was in the first quarter of the year before a lockdown was slammed on the country.
“All before the lockdown, I think our last trip was actually in Addis Ababa when we accompanied the President to the African Union that was about March before the lockdown, the lockdown came at the end of March. So whatever we spent here was before the lockdown.”
The committee also questioned Mohammed on the completion of NTA Gashua sub-station for which N250m was fully released to the Ministry, but no work done.
Chairman, Senate Committee on information, Senator Danladi Sankara maintained that the Minister of information has a lot of explaination to do over the project that has 100 per cent funding without any work being done.
The minister drew the ire of the lawmakers when he disclosed that the project was sponsored by a lawmaker as constituency project and inserted into its 2020 budget.
Senators present at the Senate panel took exception to this and took turns to query the minister over the project, condemning the slow pace of work on a project that should have received accelerated delivery with the requisite fund being made available and insisted that it is not a constituency project.
Senator representing Sokoto South Ibrahim Danbaba had disagreed with the minister saying zonal intervention project were not meant for the session.
“From the document that you have given us, the N250m is an integral portion of your allocation.
Senator Onyewuchi said every project is in a constituency so “if you have your mandate project being executed in a constituency, it does not qualify that project to be a zonal intervention project. Zonal intervention project is entirely different.”
The argument continued and the minister said they needed clarification from the sponsor of the project.
He said it was not an ongoing project neither was it a project that the ministry started.
“It is a project that was introduced into our budget in 2020 and we are following up to ensure the execution of it.”
The minister said the money was released on 24th of September hence the time frame was a problem.
“We will give you more details as to the sponsor of the project, the owner and the constituency but I know that this is a constituency project.”
He said the project entailed the procurement of an equipment in a television station in Gasua but it was included only in the 2020 budget.
Onyewuchi told him to check his details well saying they have been too long in parliament not to know what constituency project is.
The chairman of the committee also asked him to talk to the sponsors of the project.
Senator Danbaba said he still had some reservations on the expenditure saying that going by the document he presented, the first item was completion of NTA Gashua Station, adding that if it was to be a constituency project it could have not been included there.
Secondly if it was also a constituency project there wouldn’t have been any additional explanation.
▪︎ Additional reports by Nationalupdate.com