NATIONAL ASSEMBLY QUERIES MINISTER FOR ALLEGED LOPSIDEDNESS IN MINISTRY’S BUDGET 21-01-25
By Sadiq Aminu The National Assembly has queried Minister of Regional Development, Abubakar Momoh, for alleged lopsidedness in the Ministry’s budget.
The Minister was queried when he appeared before the Joint committee on Regional Development Committee alongside the Minister of State, Uba Maigari, to defend the 2024 budget performance and the 2025 proposal.
The Committee noted that the Ministry’s budget favoured Edo State over other states that were supposed to have benefitted from its projects.
The Ministry was also queried for non adherence to federal character principle in situating projects of the defunct Ministry (formerly Ministry of Niger Delta).
A member of the Committee, Matthew Nwogu questioned the minister on why 70 percent of the projects for 2024 were located in Edo State.
Mr Nwogu, wondered why other states under the Ministry were excluded while the bulk of the projects went to Edo State.
The Committee later resolved to go into an executive session, to have executive session to interface with the minister on the matter.
Earlier, while presenting the 2024 budget performance, the Minister had told the members that out of the N20 billion allocated to the Ministry in 2024 for capital budget, N2 billion was provided for zonal intervention in the Ministry’s budget by the House Leader, Prof Julius Ihonvbere, who is from Edo State.
The Minister told the Committee that the Ministry’s total budget proposal for 2025 was N28.9 billion comprising N24 billion for capital projects; N2.7 billion for personnel cost and N1.6 billion for recurrent.
The Minister lamented that the amount earmarked for the Ministry of Regional Development to address the development needs of the five regional development commissions is inadequate.
He appealed to the joint committee to increase the budget of the ministry to enable it to address the development issues of the regions through the commissions.