budjetABUJA – The budget defense by parastatal agencies under the Federal Ministry of Information could not hold before the House of Representatives Committee on Information in Abuja.
The Chairman of committee, Rep. Buba Jibril (Kogi-APC), explained that this was due to fact that the 2015 budget did not capture capital projects for the parastatal agencies.
“We have come to the realisation that we cannot proceed with this defense because this year’s budget did not capture some of our agencies and parastatals well”.
He said that there was need for the parastatals to be captured in the capital budget if they must perform optimally in fulfilling their mandates.
“Let us remind ourselves that these are technically oriented agencies and must consistently operate their equipment and be provided with new facilities for them to continue to operate optimally.
“So, as regards capital infusion in the budget, we don’t see how these agencies can operate for 2015.
Jubril, however, granted the request by the Supervising Minister of Information, Nurudeen Mohammed, to meet with his counterpart in the Ministry of Finance over the matter.
“We cannot continue with this process of budget defense; so we are adjourning this proceeding to Feb. 24”, he said.
The Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Mr Ima Niboro, described the zero allocation for parastatal agencies’ capital projects as inappropriate for them to operate.
Represented by Mr Jide Adebayo, Executive Director, Lagos Operations of the agency, Niboro expressed concern that zero allocation would affect the operations of the parastatal agencies.
“There is a general opinion that zero allocation for capital projects for all the parastatals and agencies in the Ministry of Information has been considered inappropriate for their operations.