SAN FRANCISCO, February 11, (THEWILL) – Another instance of inflation of figures has been uncovered in the 2016 Budget with the Senate Committee on Information, unearthing a curious N398m said to be meant for the purchase of computers in the budget proposal of the Ministry of Information and Culture.
The revelation came to the fore when the Committee sought to know why a stupendous amount was voted for the purchase of computers for two parastatals in the ministry, namely: the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, and the Nigeria Film and Video Censor Board, NFVCB.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, and the Managing Director of the NAN, Mr. Ima Niboro, who were faced with this puzzle why defending their ministry’s budget immediately, disowned the figure, explaining that only N5m was proposed for the procurement of computers for the NFVCB.
The Senate Committee had discovered that while N230m was budgeted for NAN for the purchase of computers, N168 million was voted for the same purpose for NFVCB.
Responding to this, Mohammed asserted, “No, that is not possible!”
“That was definitely not what was proposed. This cannot be!”
Niboro also expressed surprise about the N230m proposed for the purchase of the same item as captured under “Capital Votes” in the 2016 budget of the agency he heads.
This was as an official of the Ministry was quick to point out that N5m was only what was proposed for the computers in the original budget of the NFVCB.
In his reaction to the embarrassing situation, Chairman of the Committee, Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe, observed that: “The difference between N5m and N168m is huge.”
THEWILL recalls that the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole had disowned the budget that was with the Senate when he came for budget defence, pleading for time to present a fresh one as several figures had been smuggled in.
He had said: “We have to look into the details of the budget and re-submit it to the committee.
“This was not what we submitted.”
“We’ll submit another one.”
“We don’t want anything foreign to creep into that budget.”
“What we submitted is not there.”
There was also another instance of the smuggling in of N10bn into the budget of the Ministry of Education. This was however explained away as a typographical error.
