The Senate on Tuesday urged President Muhammadu Buhari to order the immediate release of N174 billion voted in the 2016 budget for payment of pension arrears.
The upper chamber said that fund was a bailout created in the 2016 budget to redeem all federal government pension indebtedness amounting to over N174billion.
The lawmakers said that the provision for the bailout for pensioners was seen as a viable alternative to save the ugly plight of the country’s retirees.
The Senate noted that “if the Federal Government could release bailout funds to pay outstanding workers ‘salaries in the states, similar gesture should be used for the payment of pension arrears, which is its direct primary responsibility”.
The resolution followed the adoption of a motion entitled, “The untold hardship of pensioners occasioned by federal government’s failure to contribute its statutory share of five per cent to the Pension Redemption Fund” sponsored by Senator Emmanuel Paulker,
Senator Paulker, in his lead debate noted with concern “the untold hardship our retired senior citizens occasioned by the non-payment of their pension arrears since 2015”.
He said that pensioner under Contributory Pension Scheme, CPS who retired since 2015 have not been paid their pensions due to the failure of the federal government to contribute its statutory share of five per cent to the Pension Redemption Fund in line with the Pension Reform Act, 2004 amounting to a total sum of N285, 946, 669, 881.
The lawmaker also disclosed that “about N50billion was appropriated for in 2016 to upset part of the pension arrears, but only a paltry sum of N18billion was released”.
He further lamented that the pensioners under the Defined Benefit Scheme, DBS which include the Police Pensions, Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, Nigerian Prisons Service, Civil Service and other parastatals are yet to be paid their 33 per ecent accrued arrears amounting to N174billion.
“The delay in payment of pension arrears has put pensioners across the country in a very precarious situations where they wallow in penury, sickness, hopelessness and regret for serving their fatherland diligently only to be abandoned by the government upon retirement”, he said.
Paulker therefore warned that if urgent steps are not taken to pay the outstanding arrears within the current fiscal year, the much applauded Contributory Pension Scheme may collapse, leading to unimaginable consequences for the pensioners and the country in general.
The 2016 budget will expire midnight May 5, 2017, it was learnt Monday.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Mohammed Danjuma Goje, made the clarification to reporters in Abuja.
Senator Goje who quoted from the Appropriation Act noted that “In line with the provision of Section 318 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) the bill (2016 Appropriation Bill) will run for a course of 12 months starting from the date it is assented into law.”
The Gombe Central lawmaker said that since the 2016 Appropriation Bill was assented to on May 6th 2016, it would expire at midnight May 5th, 2017.
He said that the clarification became necessary following questions about the status of the 2016 budget.
He noted that the National Assembly carefully created the clause to foreclose any unnecessary anxiety about the duration of the 2016 budget.
Senator Goje said, “As far as the bill that was signed into law by Mr. President is concerned, there will be no mop up on 31st March 2017 since the validity period for the 2016 budget is midnight May 5th, 2017. If that is done, it will be a violation of the Act. We carefully created the clause that made provision for May 5,th 2017. The Act says that the 2016 budget will run for 12 months starting from the date the bill was assented to and it was assented to on May 6th 2016.
The lawmaker assured that before the life of the 2016 budget expires, the 2017 budget would have been passed by the National Assembly.
He said, “It is necessary for Nigerians to know that there should be no anxiety about mop up of funds by March 31st. We do not have to extend the 2016 budget. If May comes and there is need to extend, then we can do otherwise. I believe before that date the 2017 budget must have been passed. We don’t have to do any extension because we have taken care of that. Therefore no anxiety, no mopping up of funds before 12 months period.”
The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, said the ministry would present the monitoring and evaluation report of the 2016 budget to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in January 2017.
Ahmed disclosed this during the public presentation of the 2017 Budget Proposals in Abuja on Monday, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
She said the ministry would continue to improve on monitoring of budget implementation.
According to her, the Federal Government is asking waivers for the National Assembly to shorten the procurement process.
The minister also said the implementation plan for the 2017 budget would be approved by the National Assembly together with the 2017 budget proposals.
She said, “Recall that when the 2016 budget was passed into law, the National Assembly made a special provision to say that the budget was for 12 months.
“The budget was passed at the end of May and the capital projects are ongoing. They will continue to be implemented in 2017 until the budget is passed.’’
Ahmed added that the release for capital project was done in stages from July to September.
“The projects are not done at the same level. There are lot of contracting process ongoing and have delayed the utilisation of the funds that have been released to some of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
“We couldn’t start monitoring and evaluation until the month of November.
“We have had batches of staff we deployed to the six geo-political zones and the physical evaluation had been completed. We have had reports turned in by respective MDAs.”
The Senate committee on Federal Character and Inter-Governmental Affairs Monday demanded explanations from the Federal Government over its decision not to vote funds for capital projects in the 2016 budget of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON).
The committee resolved to probe the zero capital allocation to the commission during its oversight visit to the commission’s office in Abuja.
It said that the investigation became necessary in order to address growing concerns and observations raised by the leadership of NAHCON.
Vice Chairman of the committee, Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi, noted the committee would immediately write to the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation to seek explanation over the development.
Chairman of the National Hajj Commission, Abdullahi Mukhtar, who gave highlights of the budget performance of the commission, told members of the committee that no funds were appropriated for capital expenditure in 2016 budget.
Mukhar said, “The present challenge facing the commission at present is office accommodation. As at today the present office being occupied by the commission’s head office is a rented apartment and funding of the rent along with the zonal offices rent is not being adequately provided for in the overhead appropriation. Proposal for construction of commission’s permanent site in Abuja was not captured in 2016 appropriation act.”
The NAHCON boss noted that out of N617, 524,914 appropriated for overhead cost, the sum of N91, 348,017 was released to date leaving a balance of N526, 176,896 million.
He told the committee that all attempts to have the Finance Ministry to allocate funds for capital projects failed.
The chairman pleaded with the Senate to give its support by way of input in the 2017 budget needed to enhance NAHCON’s performance to be at par with international standards.
Senator Hunkuyi, said, “across the board, most agencies we have gone to, we found that capital releases has been phenomenal in comparison to the last sixteen years. I stand to be corrected on this.”
Speaking on the zero budget allocation for capital in NAHCON’s 2016 budget, Senator Hunkuyi added, “There are explanations that should come from here, and additional explanations from the office of the SGF. This committee needs this information to be able to understand what is going on.
“This committee is duty bound to investigate and define the nature of the problem with a view to finding solutions to these problems, if indeed there are.”
The Kaduna North senatorial district lawmaker who commended NAHCON’s chairman for his achievements so far, asked the commission to come up with strong arguments to justify its request for increased funding.
He said, “It is commendable that despite the releases made to the commission, you have been able to utilize what was given in such a way that you achieved so much. Therefore, asking for more funding would raise concerns as to why you are making such a request since you you were able to realise so much with little.
“However, I think if the commission wants more funding, it has to come up with strong explanations to back its demands.”
Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Character, Senator Tijjani Kaura (Zamfara North), said that the reason for the panel’s oversight visit to the commission was for it to be briefed on the implementation of the 2016 budget.
The Federal Government has so far released N2.5 trillion from the N6.06 trillion 2016 budget, Minister of Budget and National Planing Udoma Udo Udoma has said.
With Udoma, who was answering questions from the Senate Committee on Appropriation yesterday, was Minister of Finance Mrs. Kemi Adeosun.
Mrs Adeosun said N753 billion was for capital projects; N117 billion went into statutory transfer.
She added that N135 billion was for service wide; N108 billion was for over head; consolidated pensions got N142 billion and personnel, N1.2 trillion.
In her brief to the committee, Mrs. Adeosun said her ministry had discovered that some revenue generating agencies inflated their expenses just to fritter the funds away.
According to her, the agencies’ books revealed overbloated travel expenses, medical allowances and others that could not be justified.
She told the committee that many of the cases had been referred to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
She could however not give an update on the amount of loot recovered so far. Recoveries are being made daily, she said.
The minister explained the difficulties associated with recovery of looted funds stashed in foreign countries, particularly the United States, Switzerland and others.
“The process of recovering looted funds is an ongoing process. Money comes on daily basis. We have not recovered much from foreign countries. It is a little more difficult.”
She told the lawmakers that the government was waiting to finalise loan arrangements from the EXIM Bank in China for the rail project.
The minister revealed that over 700, 000 new companies had been brought into the tax net, stressing that the development would increase the country’s revenue considerably.
Mrs. Adeosun said: “Right now, we are not seeing the numbers but we believe that revenue collection is a function of data. And as far as they are getting more and more companies into the net, as the economy improves, our tax revenues will improve and we will be less dependent on oil, which is one of our stated objectives.
“All the local borrowing has been undertaken in the local market and we have been utilising that money. The foreign borrowing, we had anticipated towards the second and third quarters of the year. The China-Exim funding, we are waiting for the finalisation of the contract agreement on the rail because those are project-tied.
“The budget support which we are applying to the African Development Bank for, we have completed negotiations this month and we are expecting to complete that transaction this coming month.
“The Eurobond, we have finished the procurement process for the advisers. We are waiting for No Objection Certificate from the BPP. We hope to get that within a week or so and going out to the market and close that before the end of the year.
“The international markets are quite favourable at the moment for borrowing. The rates are low, many jurisdictions actually have negative interest rate. So, there has been quite a lot of anticipation of the Nigerian Eurobond offer.
“We continue to emphasise that these borrowings are for capital projects and we are expecting that those projects will help us increase our revenues to enable us to pay back. We are being very prudent with our debt strategy.”
The Chairman of Appropriation Committee, Senator Danjuma Goje, was satisfied with the implementation of the 2016 budget so far.
He, however, expressed concern on the possibility of the country securing these loans.
The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, yesterday placed the implementation of capital expenditure in the Federal Government’s 2016 Budget at 50 per cent.
She briefed State House correspondents at the end of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided by President Muhammadu Buhari.
She was with Minister of Information Lai Mohammed and Minister of Power, Works, and Housing Babatunde Fashola.
The Minister of State also said that the Ministry presented a memo to council for notation and implementation on the progress of national roll out of the social investment Programme.
The programmes, she said, are in four parts.
She said: “First is the homegrown school feeding Programme which is targeting 5.5 million primary school people in all the states of the federation from primary 1-3.
As at today, 11 states are fully ready to start and first phase will feed 3.5 million school children.
“The second programme is a job creation programme which is aimed at preparing 500,000 university graduates, they will be equipped with devices contained information to train them as teachers, agricultural workers and also as health support workers. They will be deployed to work in their local community. They will be receiving a monthly stipend of N30,000 monthly for a period of two years.
“The third is the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), where one million care givers will be given N5000 monthly for a period of two years. Focus has been given to the extremely poor and vulnerable in our society and special emphasis is being place to providing as many as possible the northern eastern part of the country where a lot of internally displaced persons.
“The fourth is the Enterprise promotion Programme which is essentially the loan scheme which will be handled by the Bank of Industry. 1.6 million people made up of market women, traders, artisans, small businesses, youths will be given loan from N10,000 to N100,000 with a repayment period of three to six months and administration cost of five per cent.
“N500 billion was budgeted for the social investment Programme in the 2016 budget. We are rolling out with this first four programmes and it will continue till 2017.” She added
According to her, there is approval from the steering committee in sum of N150 billion, but so far only N25 billion has been released into the account while another N40 billion is in the process of being released into the account.
She also pointed out that implementation will be done in stages as the states ready for each of the Programme will be added into each of the schemes.
The school feeding Programme, she said, has started in some states like Kaduna and Osun while the federal government is only adding its resources to it.
“The federal government will handle from primary 1-3 while the states will handle from 4-6.
“The cooks have been selected, banks are in place. The only thing that needs to be done including training the persons as well as taking data of the school children have been done in those nine states.
“There is no spending yet on the national social investment Programme, we are just kicking off, the funds will be released to the Bank of Industry this week for the EIP Programme and for the school feeding Programme is only after the cooks have performed that they will get their first payment.”
The 2017 budget preparation, she said, is at an advanced stage.
“The budget implementation itself is on course, the 2016 budget is fully performed to date in terms of personnel, that is to say we are not owing.” She stated
Fashola said that the Council approved two memos including 215 megawatt Kaduna power plant and construction of sub-station to evacuate 40 megawatt of power from the Gurara hydro electric power plant phase one.
Lagos State House of Assembly yesterday re-ordered the 2016 budget by N44.9billion at the instance of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode.
Details shows that re-ordering from Capital Expenditure is N21.9 billion, that of Recurrent Expenditure is N23b, totalling N44.9billion.
Re-ordering were drawn from some Ministries, Department and Agencies MDAs, and pumped into other MDAs that needed funds for critical projects
The total Capital Expenditure for the budget is now N404.3billion, Recurrent Expenditure, N258.2billion. bringing the total to N662.6 billion
Ambode’s letter to the Assembly, requesting for the re-ordering was read on September 6, It was passed to the House Committee on Economic Planning and Budget for scrutiny.
In his letter, Ambode said the re-ordering is to “enhance efficient delivery of services and world class infrastructure to the people of the state”.
The objectives of the re-ordering as contained in the commitee’s report which was adopted by the House include: rehabilitation of hospitals; relocation of the Milke 12 Market; continuous delivery of light-up Lagos initiative; up-scaling of road construction and rehabilitation to ensure connectivity; maintaining fiscal strategy and sustaining expenditure profiles, improving capital expenditure ratio to 61:39 from from its present 50:50, completion of the first phase re-modelling of the Emergency Response System an upgrading of facilities at Cappa and Ikeja Command centres.
The Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila (APC, Lagos) has offered himself for investigation by security and anti-corruption agencies over alleged padding of the 2016 budget.
Former Chair of Appropriation Committee, Abdulmumin Jibrin (APC, Kano) had alleged Speaker Yakubu Dogara, Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun, Whip Alhassan Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor of illegally padding the budget with about N40b.
Jibrin also accused nine Committee Chairmen of inserting 2000 fictitious projects amounting to N284b into the budget.
Gbajabiamila, in a statement Friday however noted that though his name was not mentioned by Jibrin of padding the budget since the controversy began, there was a need for him to clear his name.
The Majority Leader, who contested the Speakership position with Dogara also affirmed the innocence of the entire body of Principal officers of the House on the budget padding scandal.
He said: “I returned from the United States just yesterday after a three week break I called the Speaker a day before my return to urgently fix a Principal Officers meeting so we could address the several allegations made by Hon Jibrin.
“At the meeting Speaker Dogara, Deputy Speaker Lasun , Chief Whip, Hon Ado Dogwa and Minority Leader, Hon Leo Ogor passionately and vigorously clearly stated their innocence.
“A prepared text was read and we all agreed to sign. For me as the Leader of the House I felt it was important to give them the benefit of doubt which in any case is what our constitution says.
“The decision to relieve Hon Jibrin was indeed a collective decision of which I was a part of.
“However I gave a caveat before the press release was signed, I made it clear to my colleagues in the leadership that because somehow my name had been sullied in all of this and fake documents and publications had been put out there in traditional and social media which stated I was also involved in the so called padding of the budget, that I would need to clear my name and that even though no petition was filed against me by Hon Jibrin and no invitation was extended to me by the police, I would be submitting myself on my own volition to the police for investigation.
“This is important to me as insinuations have been made from many quarters that I along with others were sponsoring Hon Jibrin. I have just this afternoon met with the police authorities for a proper and thorough investigation of my role if any in this whole bizzare episode.”
The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen. Udo Udoma, on Tuesday said the Federal Government is not implementing padded budget.
He spoke at a Town Hall meeting organized by the Alumni Association of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (AANI) in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture in Abuja.
Udoma maintained that the budget signed by President Muhammadu Buhari was well scrutinized and passed the due process in the National Assembly before it was signed into law in May.
He said, ‘‘We did not assent padded budget. The budget followed through the various stages of preparation and scrutiny and appropriation before it was signed into law.’’
The minister said the 2017 Budget would be submitted to the National Assembly in October.
He said necessary consultations and framework for the 2017 budget are ongoing.
Udoma pointed out that early preparation and submission of the budget to the National Assembly would ensure the inclusion of every detail in the budget.