Members of the House of
Representatives on Tuesday told Nigerian Ministers and other public officials
working with the Executive arm of government that they were subject to scrutiny
at all times on how budgetary allocations to their offices were used and that
they will go to jail if they spend money without appropriation.
The lawmakers also said it would
be an illegality which attracts a certain jail term should any minister go
ahead to spend money not appropriated by the Legislature.
They therefore decided that
henceforth, executive officials that fail to give a comprehensive account of
allocations made to them would not have their 2019 budgets approved by the
House.
Chairman, House of
Representatives Committee on Aviation, Hon. Nkiru Onyejiocha handed down the
warning at a public hearing meant to scrutinize chief executives of 4 agencies
in the sector on the performances of monies appropriated to them.
The officials included the
Directors-General of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, (FAAN), that of
Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA); and Accident Investigation Bureau
(AIB), as well at the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMet).
Angry that none of the invited
chief executives honoured the invitation sent to them to appear and defend
their budget performances of the last 18 months, the committee which refused to
take presentations from their representatives ruled that the Minister of
Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, and his aviation counterpart, Hadi
Sirika must appear before the lawmakers on Thursday this week.
While the FAAN DG was reported to
have a scheduled meeting with the Ministry of Transport today (Tuesday), his
NCAA counterpart was however said to have traveled outside the country on
medical leave, with his acting head said to be in Lagos.
The same reason was also given
for the absence of the commissioner of the AIB.
At this juncture, the Chairman of
the Committee, Onyejiocha retorted.
She said: “The man is in Nigeria
and attending to some foreigners in his office. My brother, I take exceptions
to the fact that the AIB Commissioner is in Nigeria and he’s attending to
foreigners and has prioritised that meeting over and above a scheduled session
with this committee, she said, stressing the toll lack of accountability is
taking on budget performance.
“Now we have this attitude that
leads to lack of accountability in budget implementation, because as we speak,
we don’t know how much has been released to them, how much has been spent and
what it was spent to achieve.
“And in less than two days from
now, they will tell us to accept their 2019 budget proposal and approve same,
we can’t take that from anybody henceforth.
“If we don’t appropriate you
can’t spend, and if you spend without our appropriation you go to jail. The
national assembly has been slighted to the barest minimum and the ministries
and agencies are doing same.
“The minister’s own is even worst
because he always finds reasons not to honour our invitation and we are done
condoning that.
“Whoever failed to defend their
2018 budget performance will not get a budget in 2019 and we will make sure
that those who deliberately avoid our oversight will have no appropriation for
next year.
“You can’t keep spending public
funds as you want without accountability to the people whose money you’re
spending, and as representatives of the people, we are here to tell you that is
completely unacceptable”.
The Committee however took
presentations from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria, Kaduna
State, represented by the training manager of the school, Captain Hassan
Abdulrahman Jimoh. He was eventually asked to update his documents regarding a
$1m simulator equipment procurement contract and report back to the committee
on Thursday morning before the resumed hearing.
Lawmakers also demanded for
explanations on N974m budgeted for fencing and another N49m for water treatment
facility at the school.
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