BusinessDay 04 Mar 2018
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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.