As part of efforts towards monitoring the executive’s implementation of the 2012 budget, the House of Representatives has directed all its standing committees to furnish it with a detailed report of the status of all ongoing projects of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government within their purview.
Adopting the resolution of a motion raised by the deputy leader of the House, Hon Leo Ogor, in plenary yesterday, the lawmakers said the move was aimed at also preparing the committees for their supervision of the 2013 Appropriation Bill and to address a situation where over 7,000 projects had been abandoned.
The lawmakers also resolved that the secretary of the government of the federation (SGF), Anyim Pius Anyim, should within two weeks provide the House a copy of the Arc. Bunu Committee report on abandoned project of the federal government.
Leading the debate, Ogor noted, “The National Assembly has appropriated trillions of naira to the MDAs for capital projects for infrastructural development of the nation since 1999 till date.
“We are worried that despite these huge allocations to the MDAs of the federal government, there is still dearth of infrastructural development across the length and breadth of Nigeria, suggestive of the fact that these funds have not been used to achieve commensurate results.”
An attempt by a lawmaker, Hon Bimbo Daramola, to convince the House that the motion would not achieve the desired result, failed to scale through. Daramola had argued that the time frame for the assignment was too short to be able to do a thorough job, while noting that just an oversight cannot address the issue of non-implementation of the budget because of the lack of political will to make things work according to the provisions of the budget passed by the National Assembly. He also pointed out that the problem is a systemic one that will take a long time to address.