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Tambuwal warns House committees about poor budget defence
Written by The Punch Wednesday, 01 February 2012
ShareThe Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Aminu Tambuwal, on Tuesday expressed dissatisfaction with the slow defence of the 2012 budget proposals before the standing committees of the House.
Most committees were expected to turn in their reports on the budget on Tuesday, but not a single committee did.
Incidentally, the House had shut plenary in the last two weeks to allow the committees ample time to examine the budget details of Ministries, Department and Agencies of the Federal Government.
On Tuesday, as the plenary reconvened, Tambuwal called for the report of the Committee on Appropriation (the clearing committee for all budget reports), but he was told that none was available.
The Chairman of the Committee on Appropriation, Mr. John Enoh, complained that his committee had not received any submissions from the other committees.
He told the House that “some committees just started their budget defence yesterday (Monday), a day to the resumption of plenary.
Enoh added that the development had made it impossible for the committee to present any report.
Tambuwal warned the committees to sit up or risk losing their powers to oversee the budgets of MDAs.
The speaker gave the committees a deadline of Monday next week to produce a report on the budget.
“By Monday, committees will lose their powers over the defence of the budget of their agencies.
“The Appropriation Committee will be asked to take over the defence of the budget. We cannot continue to keep the nation waiting,” the speaker added.
The House again shut plenary for two more days, (Wednesday and Thursday) to give the committees additional time to work on the budget proposals.
Our correspondent learnt that many committees used the two weeks provided for budget defence to pay oversight visits to MDAs rather than sitting to look at the budget details.
One committee chairman criticised his colleagues for allegedly “placing oversight visits over examining the books.”
He said, “The procedure is that you first study the documents presented to you.
“Later you can go on oversight visits to find out whether what you saw in the books was correct or not.
“I am afraid, this is not what some of the committees have done.”
According to him, only a few committees like Committee on Electoral Matters; Committee on Health; Committee on Agriculture, Committee on FCT and Committee on Banking/Currency had done some work in the past two weeks.
It was learnt that a majority of the committees had requested for funds to conduct budget defence sessions but were yet to sit.
The House spent over N3.6bn on committee activities in 2009.
The figure was jacked up to N4bn in 2010 and 2011.
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