By Christiana Ekpa
The House of Representatives on Tuesday walked out representatives of
Nigeria Maritime and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority and others from the venue of the 2022-2024 Median Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) public hearing.
The action of the committee was due to failure of the respective agencies to produce the heads of their agencies to appear before the House committee on Finance.
The Chairman of the Committee, James Faleke, stressed that the committee would not entertain any appearance other than the heads of such agencies.
He said that any head of agency that failed to appear before it would be sanctioned, adding that their names would be deleted from further benefiting from government funding.
Faleke said that there was need to look at the performance of the respective agencies’ budget in the last three years and see why they needed to improve for optimum performance in the next three years.
He added that it was expedient to also know how they spent money budgeted for capital projects in order to ensure that it was appropriately used for the purpose.
According to him, “we want Nigerians to be aware that it is not only the ministry of works that only spend on capital projects, other agencies also have money earmarked for capital projects.
He asked the respective agencies to make available to the committee their revenue in the last three years.
Meanwhile, some agencies were present but did not bring the requisite documents due to what they describe as misinformation.
The agencies are: National Business and Technical Eduction, Nigeria Immigration Service, Lagos International Trade Fair Complex.
Those agencies who were left to give account of revenue generated from 2018-2020 and the expected revenue from 2022-2024 are: Federal Housing Authority, National Space Research and Development Agency among others.
Meanwhile, the House also summoned the Accountant General for the Federation to explain the amount of revenue generated by the Nigerian Customs Service in the last three years.
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