The Senate on Thursday passed the 2017 budget of parastatal
agencies under the Federal Ministry of Information, including the News Agency
of Nigeria (NAN).
This
followed the presentation of the report of the 2017 Internally Generated
Revenue (IGR) Budget and Expenditure of Federal Government-owned information
agencies during plenary.
The other
agencies are National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Federal Radio Corporation
of Nigeria (FRCN) and the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA).
The Senate,
however passed N132.5 million for NAN while its projection for the year was
N132.5 million.
Presenting
the report, Chairman, Senate Committee on Information and National Orientation,
Sen. Suleiman Adokwe said the agency’s IGR performance for 2016 was 97.54 per
cent.
He further
said that the actual IGR budget for 2016 was N129.2 million while the
expenditure was N129.2 million
The
chairman said that the committee observed that NAN needed to widen its revenue
base through introduction of new products.
The senate
also passed that of NTA which was N4 billion; NBC, N2 billion while that of
FRCN was also N2 billion.
While
considering the report, Sen. Jibrin Barau (APC-Kano) decried why some of the
agencies were not able to make the appropriate remittances to the Consolidated
Revenue Fund (CRF).
“If these
agencies are able to make those remittances, there would be more monies to fund
the budgets,” Barau said.
Also, Sen.
Mao Ohuabunwa (PPA-Abia) said the agencies were income-generating and as such,
expected to remit to the CRF.
“We must
ensure we enforce these agencies to pay at least the 20 per cent remittance;
even if they cannot, at the end of the year we should see at least a remittance
of 10 per cent into the CRF,” he said.
Similarly,
Sen. Suleiman Hunkuyi (APC-Kaduna) noted that “these things keep recurring by
these agencies.
“It shows
that we truly have a responsibility within the chamber to sit up and look at
these expenditure profiles as it will align with the revenue profiles of these
agencies,” he said.
“If we sit
down and these budgets as approved, and they apply them differently as they
wish, what is the use then.
“This is a
clear manifestation that these agencies run accounts that do not pass the
litmus test and approval of the financial regulations as enshrined.
“We must
rise to the responsibility, particularly on IGR budgets so that at the end of
the day, we will be able to make enough savings,” Hunkuyi said.
Responding
to questions raised, the chairman said the IGR performances of the agencies
were far below expectation.
“If you
look at NTA, there are a lot of government agencies that are owing NTA.”
Adokwe said
that as government corporations having fundamental duties, they must ensure
they did not go off air.
“We believe
that these agencies have the capacity to generate these projections. What
remains is for us to have a serious oversight function to ensure that there are
no leakages and that what is collected is what is taken into the treasury,”
Adokwe said.
In his
remarks, Deputy Senate President, Mr Ike Ekweremadu, said “this Senate does not
rubber stamp any request from any agencies of government or from government
itself ”.
“We look at
things from merit. We call on those government agencies, especially NTA and
Radio Nigeria, to make effort to recover monies owed them.”
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