By Fatima Saka
The House of Representatives Committee on Hydrological Services has redirected the Nigeria Hydrological Agency to represent its 2024 Budget on Monday December 18, 2023 at 10:00am unfailingly.
The chairman of the Committee Hon.Pascal Agbodike gave the ruling at the National Assembly said that the agency failed to abide by the provision of the 2023 Appropriation Act and had exceeded its approval limit in its last budget as regards implementation.
According to him, the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) had expressly given the legislative the powers to critically scrutinize and approve or reject the ministries, departments and agencies annual budgets
Hon Agbodike further stated that the House would not pass into law anything that comes from the executive arm of government as budget.
He said: “Sincerely, I noted the observation raised by members at this budget session.
“I look at it as not a deliberate act but may be a mistake from the staff. I ‘ll give you Monday morning to re-appear.
“The Committee will give you a list of items requested of you in this budget”.
At the budget session, a member of the House Committee Hon.Ahmed Jaha had raised many issues on the line by line items of the budget and stated that there are many unjustified expenditures on the agency’s 2023 budget.
The lawmaker had pointed out that the details of the overhead and capital subheads in the previous year’s budget are not very clear, adding that there must be justification for payment of contractors while projects are still on-going.
He added that the state of projects being executed by contractors, the date of award of contract and specific amount of money paid to contractors ought to ‘ve been reflected in the previous budget of the agency.
Earlier in his presentation of the 2024 budget estimates before the lawmakers, the Director-General of the agency Engr.Clement Nze told the Committee that a total of N1,266,140,944.00 and N118,410,914.00 was earmarked for the office as capital and recurrent expenditures respectively.
He also said that the agency’s approved budget for 2023 was N453,962,977.00 while the same amount of money was released and also utilized 100% by the agency.
He added that the budget is to help the agency in monitoring floodings as well as whatever happens at the two major rivers in Nigeria River Niger and Benue and sundry issues.
