Senate demands more funds for FCT

THE Senate Committee on Federal Capital Territory (FCT), on Wednesday in Abuja, made case for more budgetary allocation to the FCT.

The committee, headed by Sen. Dino Melaye decried the yearly dwindling budgetary allocations to the FCT.

Melaye said available records showed that the allocations to the FCT had dropped from N109 billion in 2008 to as low as N30billion in the 2017 fiscal year.

These came to the fore during 2018 budget defence session of the FCT in Abuja.

The chairman, therefore, urged the Federal Government to prioritise the FCT budget because of its strategic position and role as far the image and development of the country was concerned.

According to him, the yearly dwindling budgetary allocation to FCT is unacceptable.

“This committee will get the Senate informed to as a matter of urgency, prevail on both the ministers of finance and that of budget and national planning, to prioritise budgetary allocations to FCT.

“The ministers should also effect 100 per cent releases of its capital votes to the FCT,” Dino said.

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Also, the FCT Minister, Alhaji Mohammed  Bello in his submission, said out of the N30 billion given to FCT in the 2017 fiscal year, only N12.19 billion was released, NAN reported.

According to him, this represents 40.1 per cent budget performance as far as execution of capital projects is concerned.

He, however, said the 2018 budgetary allocation to the FCT was N40billion, “this is not enough for the execution of proposed critical infrastructure projects across the territory’’.

Bello, however, explained that 27 of the projects were being prioritised based on projected allocations.