The Senate Committee on Niger Delta, on Monday, rejected the 2020 capital budget of N23 billion for the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs due to uncompleted projects in the region.
Chairman of the Committee, Sen. Peter Nwaoboshi made this known when the Minister, Godswill Akpabio appeared before the committee to defend the ministry’s budget of N25, 910,486,285.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the ministry is to reappear before the Committee on Monday, Oct. 28.
Nwaboshi said that with the oversight function carried out in the ministry, it was realised that the bane of the ministry was abandoned projects littered all over the nine Niger Delta states.
“There is no state, I dare to say that there is no local government where there is no abandoned projects in the Niger Delta.
“We cannot continue like that. With all the abandoned projects in the Niger Delta and we are talking about new projects; these new projects are designed to fail,” he said.
“Honourable minister, we need to look at this budget again and we expect you to do your cleanup because the document we needed were not supplied to us.”
Senator Sandy Ojang (PDP-Cross River) said, “We just looked at the presentation and we are faced again with the vanity of having a budget and almost through the budget year, there are no capital release.
“It calls for concern and deep worry. A budget situation where the capital outlay is even lower than personnel and other costs is a problem.”
