Senate to limit Presidency’s power on ecological fund

Posted by admin Legislature, Senate Monday, October 8th, 2012

October 8, 2012 by Oluwole Josiah, Abuja 3 Comments

NATIONAL Assembly is set to introduce a law to curtail the President’s discretion in the administration of the one per cent Ecological Fund.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Senator Ahmed Lawan, told our correspondent in Abuja that a law would be put in place to check “these abuses”.

The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, Danladi Caephas, had informed the committee that the President reserves the powers to define what constitutes ecological issues.

But Lawan said, “We are going to present a report to the Senate on this issue and we will enact a law to restrict and order the way the Ecologic cal Fund is managed.

“We cannot allow this to continue. This abuses must stop. Somebody cannot sit down and approve monies that are not guided by law.

“This money does not belong to the President; it belongs to the Nigerian people, and something drastic has to be done.”

According to Lawan, the new law will define what constitutes ecological issues for which the fund will be spent.

The committee is probing the management of the account last week uncovered an abuse of the fund to the tune N154.9bn.

It was discovered that of the total expenditures from the account, N154.9bn were spent on projects not related to the environment.

From the records available to the committee, about N928bn was spent in 2002 on projects not related to ecology, with N200m advanced to the Edo State Government as a loan, just as N728m was given as a grant to the Presidential Research and Communication Unit.

Also in 2003, N1.9bn was spent on non-ecological purposes out of which N800m was given to the Ministry of Aviation for the renovation of the Aminu Kano Airport and N150m was advanced to the Kaduna State Government to mitigate the effect of a sectarian crisis in the state.

Another N2.1bn was spent on non-ecological expenditures in 2004, while another N2.77bn was spent in 2005.

The committee also found out that in 2006 a total of N16bn was spent as grants to Yobe and Ogun States for road constructions.

Also in 2007, N24bn was spent from the ecological fund for the rehabilitation of the Shagamu expressway by the Ministry of Works.

It was also discovered that in 2008, a total of N5.7bn was advanced to the Ministry of Agriculture as expenditure for averting food shortages which was impending at the time.

In 2009, a total of N44.9bn was spent by the Federal Government from the Ecological Fund for the funding of the Third Quarter spending warrant; while in 2010, N34.6bn was withdrawn from the fund for treasury management of the Federal Government.

The documents also showed that N22bn was withdrawn from the fund in 2011 and shared to some states and local governments, just as N2.078bn was also withdrawn from the fund in 2012 for the Onitsha Bridge project.-Punchwp_posts