…As Senate committee on ecology, give other agencies one week ultimatum to appear
BY RAPHAEL EKPANG, ABUJA
It came to the senate committee on ecology and climate change as a shock on Thursday when it became obvious the Director General of the NATIONAL OIL SPILL DETECTION AND RESPONSE AGENCY (NOSDRA), MUSA IDRIS and his team when unable to defend their 2020 budget appropriation.
MR. IDRIS who staggered with words why trying to defend the budget, fumbled before the senate committee chairman on ecology and climate change, SEN. HASSAN MOHAMMED (Zamfara central) and his vice, IBRAHIM DANBABA (Sokoto South) who mesmerized them before members of the public.
However, the committee chairman, SENATOR MOHAMMED also warned that they will not hesitate to sanction other two agencies, National Agency for the Great Green Wall, and the Forestry and Research Institute of Nigeria, Ibadan if they fail to appear before it on Thursday next week.
Owing to the inability of the NOSDRA Director General , IDRIS and his directors to defend the agency’s budget and expenditures, the senators were greatly disappointed and worried that they could neither defend their yearly budget appropriation, nor their yearly expenditures.
According to SENATOR MOHAMMED, “I am so disappointed in you DG, you think we are here to play, we are here for a serious business because all of you elected us to represent you here, so, when you come here you must be very serious because that is what is require of you here.
“I am so embarrassed because after you presented a paper to us and after a short while you said it was not the real one. DG I will better give you more time to go and prepare well and return back here,” he said.
In the same vein, SEN. IBRAHIM DANBABA expressed disappointment that despite the NOSDRA DG claim that the budget presentation of the agency was jointly prepared by the director of finance, procurement and administration, yet the paper was as poor as never prepared by the trio, a situation he advised them to step up their job or fine alternative.
SEN. DANBABA tutored the trio on how to prepare a financial report for budget defence when he said, they should focus on the appropriation, money received and expenditure year by year starting from 2017 till date.
What baffled the senators mostly was the fact that the DG and his team could not differentiate between 2017, 2018 and 2019 budget documents.
He said “I don’t know who prepared this document, Mr. Director General you need competent people to assist you.”
Meanwhile, MUSA apologized to the committee for the errors in the documents, and pledged that they were going to go back and correct their errors and separate it by the years.
“Mr. Chairman I’m very sorry for these mistakes, we are going to look at it on yearly basis, and we want Thursday next week to be able to reconcile our records” MUSA pleaded.
