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Sunday <strong>04</strong> <strong>Mar</strong>ch <strong>2018</strong><br />

C002D5556<br />

13<br />

Politics<br />

‘Why we scrutinise government’s expenditure...<br />

Continued from page 12<br />

minimum possible before we could collect<br />

it for consideration. It is very tedious;<br />

you know we have up to 60 or 70 MDAs<br />

and we have to sit down and look at<br />

those projects, especially because these<br />

are totally capital projects, the recurring<br />

expenditures is something like salaries,<br />

allowances, so you may not really have<br />

to examine much but even at that you<br />

have to give it to the head of service to<br />

furnish us with the salary structures so<br />

that we can look at the recurrent to know<br />

how much they have been proposed<br />

for. If they are saying that we are paying<br />

about N 6.7 billion salaries, that means<br />

that our budget outline should flow on<br />

that recurrent structures along that line.<br />

So instead of you are paying like N6, 7, 8<br />

million, you bring about N30 million that<br />

means that there is something wrong. So<br />

we look at it very well and also make our<br />

own recommendations.<br />

One of the projects visited was the<br />

Akwa Ibom lodge in Lagos; it was a<br />

controversial project, how relevant is<br />

that project and why did your committee<br />

approve money for it?<br />

If you followed us to Lagos, you would<br />

agree with me that government needs<br />

that structure, because the one we have<br />

is as old as Nigeria itself. That area in Ikeja<br />

is so flooded and it has turned to a commercial<br />

area, and if you see that property<br />

by yourself you will even advise government<br />

not to enter there. In fact that<br />

place has been occupied by miscreants<br />

because of the status of the structure.<br />

One reason is that when you are talking<br />

about industrialization, government cannot<br />

build industries, it is private partners<br />

that can come and build industries for<br />

them to be able to run; and most times<br />

these private partners are not from<br />

here. You can agree with me that now<br />

we have security challenges, and before<br />

you can embark on a journey you have<br />

to know what is the security situation<br />

in that area? Every state government in<br />

Nigeria owns a lodge in Lagos just as they<br />

own a lodge in Abuja, why is it so? One<br />

of the reasons is that it is a place where<br />

government can host their guest whether<br />

they are outside or within the country. If<br />

for instance you want to have a meeting<br />

with some groups of people in Lagos, the<br />

cost of coming to Uyo might be more<br />

expensive than that of one person going<br />

to meet them in Lagos, so government<br />

is also looking at reducing the amount<br />

of money spent. Why we even went<br />

back to Lagos lodge is that sometimes<br />

last year some people went out with<br />

some placards that Akwa Ibom people<br />

protested that government should not<br />

have used N10 billion to construct the<br />

Lagos lodge; you are aware. And that was<br />

a wrong information. I even had to come<br />

up with a press release, saying that N10<br />

billion was not the amount for the Lagos<br />

lodge, rather it was the total amount of<br />

money during supplementary budget for<br />

a particular MDAs. Not only for Lagos<br />

lodge. It was a sum a total, and prominent<br />

among the projects for that supplementary<br />

budget was the Lagos lodge. We<br />

now said look, to prevent the event of<br />

people running down government, even<br />

at the expense of the committee on appropriation,<br />

we had to go to Lagos. Why<br />

do we go to lagos? To see actually what<br />

the government is doing, because the<br />

executive did not come out with any<br />

statement about the size of the project.<br />

When we got to Lagos, we went to the<br />

old site and asked question: why do we<br />

build this one? They said the government<br />

of Akwa Ibom state under the leadership<br />

of Godswill Akpabio acquired that land<br />

many years ago and people started encroaching<br />

on that land, and it is possible<br />

for anybody to take over that land from<br />

the government of Akwa nIbom state<br />

because the governor will not be able to<br />

go there every day to check whether the<br />

land is still there or not. And at the same<br />

time in order to remove that perception<br />

that we needed N10 billion to build that<br />

lodge, when we had our interface with<br />

the contractor. I asked him how much<br />

was the project, the contractor said that<br />

it was N2.1 billion. And you can see the<br />

project by yourself, a duplex building with<br />

offices, guest houses, swimming pool,<br />

and even the boys’ quarters for staff. We<br />

also carried out our own personal investigation,<br />

trying to get our own evaluation<br />

of the project; and including furnishing of<br />

the house. If you look at the cost of building<br />

materials now in Nigeria, comparing<br />

with the magnitude of that project that<br />

we saw, there was no way we could not<br />

have appropriated money for that project<br />

to be done. And also know that only<br />

N1.2 billion was appropriated for the<br />

project as at the time people were saying<br />

that it was N10 billion. It is only this year<br />

that we have appropriated more because<br />

the project is about N2.1 billion, so we<br />

have appropriated another one billion<br />

naira for the completion of the project.<br />

Government could to have paid the<br />

contractor because there was no money<br />

appropriated for. One thing I can assure<br />

you is that I have also been carrying out<br />

my own independent investigation concerning<br />

who is the governor of the state,<br />

and I have noticed that he has a financial<br />

knowledge of ‘if you do this that will be<br />

wrong and if you do that that will also be<br />

right.’ One is that I checked the implementation<br />

of all the MDAs and I have not<br />

seen one that has been implemented that<br />

was not appropriated for in the budget.<br />

During the course of your inspection<br />

of the previous year’s projects, and<br />

cross checking what was proposed for<br />

the projects , I want to believe you discovered<br />

some discrepancies on some<br />

projects that were repeated, and some<br />

money was save as you were able to cut<br />

down on some repeated projects. How<br />

much has the committee been able to<br />

save for the state so far?<br />

You know sometimes it is not the money<br />

that they spent but the proposal, because<br />

it is only one or two that got up to 60 or 70<br />

percent of the total proposed estimate.<br />

Now when we sat at the committee of<br />

the appropriation defense, well others<br />

have earlier came up with so much of<br />

requests for augmentation, in fact the<br />

judiciary came up with N4 billion augmentation<br />

to service liabilities; And they<br />

wrote to us. Other MDAs also did. The<br />

new ministry of manpower labor headed<br />

by Ibanga Akpabio also did; we had to<br />

remove votes from the head of service<br />

domiciled there so that we can give it to<br />

the new ministry. We would have saved<br />

almost like N30 billion, this N30 billion<br />

may not be saved for the purposes of being<br />

re-proposed in the new year budget.<br />

What we do is that for those areas that<br />

people came up with requests for augmentation,<br />

instead of bringing additional<br />

to the budget size, we save and augment<br />

You know<br />

sometimes it is<br />

not the money<br />

that they spent<br />

but the proposal,<br />

because it is only<br />

one or two that<br />

got up to 60 or<br />

70 percent of the<br />

total proposed<br />

estimate<br />

it internally. Like in terms of ministry<br />

of works, we have saved at least N15<br />

billion, then we augment it with other<br />

areas that needed to be augmented for;<br />

the ministries, the MDAs and all of that.<br />

Why we are doing so is that if we did not<br />

do that, if we bring additional N30 billion<br />

to add to the budget size, we would<br />

have had almost N750 billion proposed<br />

for <strong>2018</strong>, so we saved and augment it.<br />

What we do is that during public hearing,<br />

a lot of people complained about social<br />

sectors which includes the education,<br />

health, and in fact inter- ministerial is also<br />

part of social sector because it provides<br />

infrastructures to social sectors like rehabilitation<br />

of schools and health facilities.<br />

I can remember that we added 4 billion<br />

naira to education, another 4 billion<br />

naira to health, another 4 billion naira to<br />

inter- ministerial, and other areas, I may<br />

not be able to mention here because it<br />

is all documented. We did that because<br />

we based our decision in the public<br />

opinion, that government needs to pay<br />

the newly recruited nurses, they need to<br />

pay bursary against the backdrop that it<br />

has not being doing that in the past years.<br />

Even though we have a free and compulsory<br />

education in the state it is not at<br />

the university level. So the government<br />

still needs to provide assistance to our<br />

students at the university level.<br />

About that hospital, we just learnt<br />

recently that equipment worth half a<br />

billion naira had been carted away, I<br />

don’t know if your committee can do<br />

anything about it.<br />

I wrote to the commissioner for health,<br />

to send to us the memoranda that was entered<br />

with Cadiocare management team,<br />

and the list of items that was handed<br />

over to him. It might not be under my<br />

committee; I am going to make a report,<br />

send it to the appropriate committee of<br />

the house which is committee for health.<br />

The document has just been sent to me. I<br />

have also written to Cadiocare management<br />

to come to this office with the list of<br />

those items they took over from the state<br />

government and the list of the ones they<br />

handed over to the state government<br />

when their business could not continue.<br />

They should also give us their oral statement<br />

of the matter, and they replied to<br />

me that they are willing to come, and that<br />

they will send those lists to us as soon as<br />

possible. We have our procedures, we are<br />

not going to use any stick to beat anyone<br />

to bring us documents; by the time we<br />

write our second letter we will find out<br />

any reasons why they are delaying and<br />

if they refuse to come, then we will take<br />

it to the floor of the house of assembly<br />

for the house to issue a subpoena. And<br />

the house of assembly can issue a subpoena<br />

for arrest of anybody; even if you<br />

are abroad we can send an interpol for<br />

your arrest and send to Akwa Ibom to<br />

answer for your errors. I may not be able<br />

to conclude specifically that items worth<br />

that sum was carted away by Cadiocare<br />

until when we hear from both sides, then<br />

we will be able to say this is our position.<br />

So we will carry out our investigation<br />

and come out with recommendations. If<br />

there were some items they took away<br />

we will recommend that they should<br />

bring them back and if they cannot, then<br />

we will sum it up and say this is how much<br />

you are owing us, the government has<br />

a way of retrieving money from them if<br />

they still want to be in business.

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