2012 Budget Scales Second Reading

This Day

21 December 2011

2012 Budget Scales Second Reading

The Senate Tuesday concluded the preliminary consideration of the 2012 Appropriation Bill, taking it through the Second Reading and committing it to its Committee on Appropriation for further legislative fine-tuning.

This came just as the upper and lower chambers passed the N294.54 billion 2011 budget of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NNDC) before adjourning for the Christmas and New Year recess.

The Senate commenced the consideration of the N4.749 trillion budget last Thursday, with senators expressing reservations on the various sectoral allocations, especially the security vote, which most of the lawmakers described as “outrageous”.

In his remark, Senate President, David Mark, said the federal bureaucracy was over bloated, noting that something had to be done about it.

He said if the executive failed to implement the budget, lawmakers should do something about it.

According to him, the executive should have consulted widely before making up the figures for the budget, lamenting, “We were not consulted and I think that is not good enough. Nobody can represent the people as much as we do. I don’t think anyone of us was consulted. I think that is not good enough.”

The Senate also Tuesday passed the NNDC's 2011 budget of N249.544 billion.

This is to give effect to the implementation of capital projects planned by the commission. The appropriation bill is expected to take care of the period starting from December 31 and be completed by March 31, 2012.

The budget was belated following the dissolution of the board by the Federal Government due to the protracted internal squabbles leading to its recent re-composition.

Managing Director of the Commission, Mr. Christian Oboh, who had earlier defended the estimates of the 2010 before the Senate Committee on NDDC, said the commission had recovered the 52 million US Dollars lodged in foreign accounts by the previous board of the commission.

He further told the Committee that it would seek the consent of the board of the commission to commit the retrieved funds to key projects to be carried out within the year now ending on March next financial year.

He said the Federal Government only paid  half  of the 65.5 billion Naira entitlement of the Commission the federation account pointing out that  the liabilities of the commission stood at N350 billion and which, he said, was far more than the budget and wanted federal government intervention.

Oboh said the commission had cumulatively embarked on a total of 3,147 infrastructural projects across the nine Niger Delta states and that out of the figure, 1,579 projects had been completed; 659 commissioned and 920 projects ready for commission.

The commission after its submission was, however, given March 2011 by the committee chairman as the deadline for the submission of the 2012 budget, saying “this will be the last time the committee would entertain late submission of the budget from the commission”.