Senator representing Lagos West and chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Solomon Adeola has declared that the 9th Assembly would not tolerate unauthorised expenditures not backed by law or the relevant Acts of the National Assembly guiding such expenditure from the Ministry of Finance or agencies of government.
He made the declaration at the weekend at a meeting with the House of Representatives Committee Chairman on Finance, Honourable James Faleke.
Senator Adeola said every expenditure must henceforth be in compliance with the Fiscal Responsibility Act and other applicable laws of the land.
The Chairman Senate Committee on Finance alleged that Federal Government Revenue Generating ministries, departments and agencies(MDAs) engaged in the illegal diversion of Federal Government revenues and in the process deprived enough revenue to implement people-oriented policies and programmes.
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He said: “It has been observed that year in year out, the Federal Government has not been able to meet its targets on independent revenue sources. The finding indicates that a major culprit in this shortcoming is the inadequacies of MDAs couple with their penchant for diversion of revenue on frivolous excuses for expenditure that are mostly recurrent.
“Reports show that over the years, the Federal Government has not been able to surpass 30% of its revenue targets. With this, it is small wonder we always have a low level of budget implementation for critical capital projects. We need to reverse this trend and intends to introduce a quarterly review of targets so that needed revenue can come to the federal purse.”
Senator Adeola stated that the flagrant use of Financial Regulations issued by Ministry of Finance and MDAs to direct spending will no longer be tolerated as such is at variance with laws enacted by the National Assembly and the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria.
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