ABUJA- The Senate yesterday assured the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission ( EFCC), that it will increase the budgetary allocation approved for it by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Anti – Corruption and Financial Crimes, Senator Chukwuka Utazi, stated this when the EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Magu, appeared before his committee to defend his agency’s budget.
The EFCC boss had during his presentation, said that the reduction of the N11.2bn proposed by his agency as its budget for this year, to about N4.4bn by the ministry of Budget and National Planning, was grossly inadequate because it translated into a deficit of about N9.2bn.
He lamented that his agency had planned to recruit 750 additional personnel of different cadres this year that would carry out the task of carrying out the war against graft which according to him, may not be possible again.
He also informed the committee that the votes allocated for foreign trips had been removed.
But Utazi assured him that since the anti – corruption crusade of the present administration was enjoying both local and international support, the senate will do everything within its powers to encourage the agency saddled with the responsibility of prosecuting the graft war.
He also pledged to support the EFCC to complete its permanent headquarters in Abuja so that the agency could move away from its current rented apartment within the city centre.
Meanwhile, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Aviation, Senator Hope Uzodimma and the Minister of Aviation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, on Tuesday pledged to separately carry out an extensive audit of the renovation of the nation’s airports carried out by the last administration.
Uzodimma and Amaechi stated this at a budget defence session involving the committee and the aviation ministry.
Uzodimma for instance, wondered why the ministry would still include some projects contained in the first phase of the airport remodeling exercise when the work was about 99 percent completed.
He said,”I can see some phase one projects. For phase two which is about 75 percent competed, I still see a lot of projects under it in your budget. Since there was no approval for phase three, we asked you not to sign agreement but I learnt that you had signed some agreements and backdated it.
“We are going to audit the project. We are going to support the minister to carry out comprehensive audit. So that we check whether if you have exposed government to the over N300bn debt profile for aviation before us.”
“We have been begging you for the past six years to supply names of consultants supervising your projects but you didn’t supply. Let us have engineering design so that we will be able to compare the cost but you didn’t give us.
“How do we now approve further money for this project going forward. We need the technical staff to work with our committee so that we can achieve a workable budget”
