During the budget defence session on Wednesday the Minister was asked to explain why the project titled “youth boot camp training” in advertisement was captured differently in the 2024 budget line as “Technical Support for SMEs training around foundry production in three geopolitical zones.
Co-chairman of the Committee, Hon Zainab Gimba wondered why a training project captured as technical support for SMEs was advertised by the Ministry as a training boot camp for 700 youths:
In her comment, the Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Steel Development, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, said the action could land the minister in the net of anti-graft agencies as it could be misconstrued as misappropriation.
“I hope you understand, because what this means is that you are carrying out an exercise that is not contained in the budget and that leads to misappropriation of funds.
“I hope you understand because what should have happened is there should have been a correction and we are giving you a chance.
“Let me note this now. This is already in a public record. So just if anyone here has access to this information, which I’m sure they do, and decides to write a petition to EFCC, you and your team could be arrested for this.
“You did say that even though you budgeted N2 billion, you have only had a release of N1.6 billion, but no Kobo has been spent out of it yet. So we are just advising you so that you will not have EFCC running after your necks.
You should actually go back to the drawing board and take it that the funds you have spent conducting the little exercise which is an advertisement with the wrong advertisement should be corrected” she laments.
On her part: Hon Gimba said: “Please we are asking you to do that now. Let me just clarify. Minister, as a rider to what you are saying, let me tell you Honourable Minister, before we came into this meeting, I spoke with the Permanent Secretary, I told him that this thing is not the correct, let’s correct it because no human being is perfect. We cannot all be perfect.
“I told him that this is not correctly done. He told me, I’m quoting him verbatim, ‘Honourable Chair, allow us to do our job. This is the way we want to do it. You can oversight us later.’ But I feel that I cannot leave the wrong thing to be done. We can still correct it. That’s why we are insisting that, Honourable Minister, you correct that.
“Maybe in the procedure there are things that are not done. We are not here in the National Assembly to wait for you to make mistakes and then we say you have done wrong. But it is in the procedure. If I want, I can keep quiet. After doing the whole thing, executing it, I can say you are wrong and then you cannot reverse it.
Meanwhile, the joint committee summoned the Ministers of Finance, Budget, and National Planning to explain the declining capital budget for the steel sector.
The committee issued a letter demanding their appearance within 24 hours and declared a state of emergency on scrap collection.
The committee emphasized the need to safeguard government infrastructure and enhance steel production, proposing the establishment of scrap collection centers across the six geopolitical zones of the country.
The committee also highlights the need to increase the budgetary allocation in the proposal citing the important of steel development to the country’s economy.
