The House of Representatives has defended the National Assembly’s failure to pass the 2018 budget on Thursday as earlier planned.
The Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Abdulrazak Namdas, who gave the reason on Thursday in Abuja, told journalists that the budget was programmed for passage this week ab initio, but had to be shifted to next week.
“The volume of work still caused a little delay. So, this week didn’t work well for us, “Namdas explained.
He, however, gave an assurance that the laying of the budget before the House and its eventual passage would not exceed next week.
“Hopefully, we will lay the budget on Tuesday and pass it within the same next week. I am no longer speculating, but I am telling you what the current position is with the budget,” he said.
The budget has twice suffered delayed passage by the National Assembly.
The legislature had first announced April 24 as the date to pass the budget, but later shifted it.
President Muhammadu Buhari had presented the estimates of the budget to the National Assembly on November 7 last year.
It has not left the National Assembly owing to a lengthy executive-legislature friction and the late appearances of ministers and heads of government agencies to defend their proposals.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, on Thursday disclosed how the Federal Government had recovered N600m afresh from some commercial banks in continuation of the Treasury Single Account policy.
She said the money was taken by the banks as excess charges on the accounts they maintained for government agencies in the pre-TSA era.
The minister appeared before an ad hoc committee of the House investigating the status of the TSA.
The committee, which is chaired by a member of the All Progressives Congress from Kano State, Mr. Abubakar Danburam-Nuhu, had grilled Adeosun on the operations of the TSA, recoveries and the involvement of consultants.
She said the N600m was recovered as part of the ongoing mopping up of government funds in accounts still being traced.
“We got the N600m recently, which was for excess charges by these banks. It was returned and we are still on it”, the minister told the committee.
Adeosun also said the TSA had been implemented almost 100 per cent by the MDAs, though she admitted that a few accounts still kept outside the system were being followed up.
She mentioned the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the West African Examination Council accounts as well as those being operated by foreign missions as examples of such exemptions.
When the committee asked why the government paid up to N450m to a consultant just to carry out some recoveries, Adeosun explained that the level and nature of the operation required the expertise of such consultants.
“In one branch of a bank, we recovered N1.6bn; just one branch. There are many other branches. You are looking at the many accounts holding government money before the TSA started. There is a lot,” the minister stated.
However, members queried why the government would continue to use consultants to audit the accounts in such banks when the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation could have performed such a function.
Adeosun maintained that in the circumstances, the engagement of consultants sped up the process.
In plenary, the House passed three separate resolutions seeking investigations into alleged financial infractions by some government agencies.
In one of the resolutions, the House ordered a probe into how the Registrar of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria expended the N3.9bn budgeted for the council in 2017.
In the second resolution, the House sought to probe alleged fictitious contract awards and gross mismanagement of billions of naira by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency.
The sponsor of the motion, which resulted in the resolution, Mr. Rimamnde Shawulu, told the House that in one of the contracts, the sum of $173,930 was involved monthly.
In another instance, $80,000 was allegedly involved, while in a third contract, Shawulu informed the House that the infractions totalled $195,300,000.
In the third resolution, the House directed its Joint Committees on Banking/Currency, Capital Market/Institutions and Financial Crimes to investigate the “contradictory figures from the Central Bank of Nigeria and other international organisations about Nigeria’s financial status.”
The motion was moved by the Chairman, House Committee on Capital Market and Institutions, Mr. Yusuf Tajudeen.
The motion stated, “The House observes that there has been consistent disparity about the state of Nigeria’s economy between the Central Bank of Nigeria, local and international financial organisations, including the International Monetary Fund.
“It observes that the CBN and other financial organisations have been churning out contradictory figures about the financial status of Nigeria, which is not only disturbing, but confusing.”
“It notes that as part of its measures to regulate the financial standing of Nigeria, the CBN came up with the open market operations, which the institution said is geared towards controlling liquidity.
“It also notes that according to reports from the CBN, it has mopped up through Treasury Bills issuance, about N5.6tn as excess liquidity between January 2 and April 12, 2008.”
It added, “The House is concerned that the CBN allegedly spent N372.9bn as cost of managing the excess liquidity in circulation between January 2 and April, 12 2008, at a time when many financial experts warned about the dire consequences of the policy on the economy.
“It is worried that the CBN went ahead with this policy at a time when it claimed that commercial banks were having liquidity challenges, thus raising many questions about the genuineness and rationale for the policy.
“It is also worried that the CBN, which claimed that there was excess liquidity in the economy, allegedly gave commercial banks the opportunity to access the institutions’ window to survive.
“It is disturbed that the alleged CBN’s approach of claiming to mop up excess liquidity and at the same time lending commercial banks money to stay afloat may have collateral damage on the nation’s economy.
“(The House is) alarmed that with this policy, the CBN may be unwittingly collaborating with commercial banks to deplete the country’s finances, helping commercial banks to make free money without little or no investment.”
Source: Punch
