The Senate has descended heavily on the Executive Arm for forwarding to the National Assembly on yearly basis, envelope budgeting for approval.
The Senate expressed this through its Committee on Solid Minerals, Mine, Steel Development and Metallurgy during the Budget defence exercise.
It also frowned at the abandonment of the Ajaokuta Iron and Steel Project, through non-provision of required budgetary provisions on yearly basis.
Anger of the committee members on the envelope budgeting and abandonment of the Ajaokuta Steel project was triggered by proposed N23.4billion 2022 budget estimates, enveloped for the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, as presented by the Minister of State, Dr. Uchechukwu Sampson Ogah.
Dr. Ogah, who represented the Minister, Arch. Olamilekan Adegbite, in his presentation, said out of the N23.4billion budget profile for the Ministry in 2022, N10billion is for personnel cost, N1.47billion for overhead cost and N11billion for capital expenditure.
Irked by the presentation, members of the committee, one after the other, decried the meagre budgetary allocation for the sector, which according to them, should rank second after the oil and gas sector. Specifically, the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Tanko Al- Makura ( APC, Nasarawa-South ), said “the yearly ritual called the budget, is garbage in, garbage out, which will not take the country to anywhere as far as required diversification is concerned.
Raising the tempo of the anger in his own contribution, Senator Smart Adeyemi, (APC, Kogi-West), said the economic team of President Muhammadu Buhari is clearly out of tune with realities on the ground as regards what Nigerians need.
“How on earth would a Minister propose N82 billion for procurement of Mosquitoes net and a sector as important as the Solid Minerals, given N10 or N11billion?” he fumed.
Lamenting further, he stated, “Ajaokuta Iron and Steel Complex that can give jobs to about 50, 000 Nigerians, is lying fallow in a country, with an army of unemployed youths who can stage a revolution at any time.
“Nigeria is bleeding from this envelope form of budgeting, riddled with repetition of line items and allocations on a yearly basis. The best way of doing this is to remove whatever bottleneck hindering continuation of work on Ajaokuta Steel complex and get it completed”, he emphasised.
But the Minister, in his response, said envelope budgeting was not the creation of the ministry as it affects other government agencies.
He added that even with the envelope budgeting and lean resources, the Ministry has changed the narrative of low internally generated revenue to very appreciable figures now.
However, as a result of the short notice given to the Ministry for the budget presentation, the Committee later re-scheduled Monday next week for the detailed defence of 2021 Budget implementation and presentation of 2022 Budget estimates respectively.
