Senate Raises Concern Over PTI Revenue Generation

The Senate yesterday frowned at the management of the Petroleum Training Institute internally generated revenue for the 2012 even as they directed the institute to furnish them with details of its capital and outgoing projects.

Also, the Senate Committee on Judiciary yesterday expressed displeasure over a government policy which provides for payment of foreign service allowance to Nigerian Judges serving in other countries.

The Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) during the budget defense of the PTI, expressed concern that the revenue said to have been generated by the institute from its trainings did not reflect in the 2012 budget.

“We are surprised that the incomes you generated from trainings last year could not be found in your budget for this year. Where is your revenue generation profile?”, Abe queried.

The Committee also queried the N915 million budgeted for the institute’s capital projects for 2012, saying that the N477 million appropriated last year should have been enough to complete all its projects.

Responding, Dr. Denner said, “We have a lot of ongoing projects and we are hoping that funds would be released to us on time to execute them”.

When prodded by the Committee on the controversy surrounding the missing training vessel for the institute, Mrs Denner said no allocations were made for the vessel this year. She added that despite early payments and subsequent payments made for the acquisition of the vessel, the ship was yet to get to the shores of Nigeria.

She noted that the PTI intended to raise money from the ministry on the vessel, adding that the vessel was under the care of the Nigerian High Commission in Singapore.

Meanwhile, the Committee on Judiciary led by Sen. Umaru Dahiru, expressed its resentment at the policy yesterday while representatives the Chief Justice of Nigeria brought its 2012 budget for defense.

According to Secretary of the Nigerian Judicial Council, Danladi Halliru, who spoke for the CJN,? 70million was earmarked in the 2012 budget for the allowance of the judges which is a cut back from 120 million naira last year.