By Ignatius Okorocha
The Senate Committee on Federal Capital Territory( FCT), has said it will not approve the 2022, 2023 capital expenditure of the FCT without convictions that funds appropriated for the Federal Capital Territory,( FCT) have been judiciously spent.
Senator Smart Adeyemi ( Kogi West) made this declaration on Monday during an interactive meeting with the FCT mandate secretariat , Director of Engineering , CCECC and CGC companies in the senate following the submission by the Executive secretary of the of FCDA Engineer Hadi Shehu, that the N43billion contract awarded for the extension of the Goodluck Jonathan Express way has attracted N91billion inform of variations.
The submission that the contract awarded since December 2014 has been varied to over 100% without verifiable document and evidence according to Abiodun Olujimi ( Ekiti South) call for investigation.
Members of the senate Committee were unanimous on the need to investigate the various projects in FCT between 2021 and 2022 apporpraition years before the Senate could pass the 2022 budget of the Federal capital territory.
The Chairman told the officials of the Federal capital that “We are commencing the investigation to know which project you have completed, how much you have received, which project you have not completed and the progress of your projects. We will not shy away from asking questions. let nobody assume we have no time because the 9th National Assembly is winding up , we will not hesitate to mention name of whoever that is involved. I want you Directors to talk to your officers from Tuesday we are commencing oversight function.”
“The essence of the oversight function is to make sure that the three budget before us, the appropriations for areas that are key to the social development and infrastructure development of the city, we want to look at education, we are going to look at social development, we are going to look at health and we are going to look at engineering, we want to make sure all this funds that were approved by the senate have been properly utilized and we want to see result of what has been done in time past “ he said
Continuing he said, “So our interaction today is to ask questions before we embark on the oversight function Tuesday to look at issues, what is on the ground and we will approve money for agencies and departments, if what is on the ground suggest that such agencies or Departments do not merit such funds we will transfer it to other areas that need interventions, so we want to see project completed.”
He told the representatives of the minister that the” senate will not pass budget without seeing the extent of the work done. We will not pass budget because money has been allocated, we want to see the reasons for the money allocated. We want to be satisfied that the money is required. We can just pass of over N600billion without being convinced that the allocations are justified and convictions that the budget should be approved.”
“Where we are not convinced, we will not hesitate to reduce or expunge totally from the
“Nigeria is bleeding and there is no other way of doing it before the economy will collapse on our head. Except we are convinced that there is need for this fund to be released”
It would be recalled that the FCT administration on Thursday last week presented its 2022 budget to the senate barely three months to the end of the 2022 financial year.
