NASS halts N/Delta budget, grills minister over poor performance

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The National Assembly’s joint committee on Niger Delta, on Thursday, stood down the consideration of the 2024 budget of the Ministry of Niger Delta over alleged poor performance.

They described the ministry as the “lowest-performing Ministry, Department and Agency (MDA) in terms of budget implementation”.

The ministry recorded 37% capital budget implementation in 2023, with a little over N4 billion released for its services in the year.

This was disclosed in Abuja when the Minister of Niger Delta Development, Hon Abubakar Momoh, appeared before the Joint Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Niger Delta to defend the 2024 estimates of the ministry.

According to lawmakers, who grilled the minister for about one hour, a report before the committee indicates that up to 200 “abandoned” or poorly-funded projects dot various locations in the nine Niger Delta states, some dating back to 2915.

For instance, the Co-Chairman of the Committee in the Senate, Sen. Babajide Ipinsagba, told the session that over 49 of such projects had been appearing in the budget of the ministry since 2022, where a paltry sum is allocated with the full knowledge that the money will make no impact.

The Co-Chairman from the House, Hon. Ugonna Uzurigbo, agreeing with Ipinsagba, noted that he had hardly seen a minister of Niger Delta inaugurating a new project in recent years.

He stated, “This is the lowest performance by an MDA, 37%. This is the lowest. I have not seen the minister of Niger Delta commissioning projects.

“Your procurement and finance department has to be up and doing to speed up processing. Other MDAs are making progress. They are implementing 80% and much more, and they all follow the same procurement process.

“Even in your 2024 budget, there is no difference… you have projects dating back to 2015 that have not been executed.”

The ministry has a budget proposal of N21.2bn for 2024, out of which N18.066bn is earmarked for capital projects, an amount lawmakers fear will be merely spread across projects in “pittance” and later abandoned without achieving any meaningful objectives.

The minister, Abubakar Momoh, while responding to the questions raised by the lawmakers, blamed the problems of the ministry largely on non-releases of allocations by the Ministry of Finance.

He told the committee that the allocations were not only inadequate but were also not released as expected to make way for the execution of projects.

“37% performance is low; I agree. I also agree that lack of releases caused the issues with this performance,” Momoh said.

However, the minister argued that because 2023 was a “transition year”, he didn’t expect that his predecessors would do much as their attention was more focused on preparing to exit the office.

“This is a transition year, and performance is usually low. I can assure you that this will not happen in 2024 when we are fully on board. We came on board in August; we are just about three months in the office. All the projects that we have for the 2024 budget, I will pursue them to completion”, told the committee.

Momoh said he could not put a date to when ongoing projects by the ministry would be completed because it all depended on when funds would be available.

But, not satisfied with his explanations, the committee, through a motion moved by Sen. Seriake Dickson (PDP, Bayelsa), invited the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun, and the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Sen. Abubakar Bagudu, to appear before it to speak on the inadequate budgeting and releases for the Niger Delta ministry.

Momoh too was directed to accompany Edun and Bagudu to the next session of the committee.

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