The House of Representatives on Monday came hard on the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) for allocating N32 million to meals in its 2025 budget amid economic hardship.
The lawmakers made their feelings known when the Executive Secretary of NEITI, Orji Ogbonnaya Orji appeared before the House Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) for the 2025 budget defence session.
Orji had said that NEITI was given a budget envelope of N6.5 billion for the 2025 financial year, out of which N2.220 billion is earmarked for personnel, N1.722 billion for overhead and N2.575 billion for capital projects.
However, members of the committee queried the agency for repeating items it budgeted for in 2024, while also including items that are not justifiable in the current economic situation in the country.
Hon. Kafilat Ogbara (APC, Lagos), said agencies of government should ensure that what they bring to the parliament as their budget were in line with items specified in the budget and not just see the annual budget as a ritual of appropriating money so as to get their own share of the national cake.
Ogbara queried the inclusion of N32 million for meals in the 2025 budget when Nigerians are going through hard times saying, “there is no way you can spend that amount of money for meals in a year.
“Most of our MDAs should ensure that what they are bringing as budget proposal must actually tally with the line items and the purpose why you want to use such funds. Let us not just see budget defence as, ‘the money is there and we should share it. So, let us see how to get our own share.”
For his part, Hon. Ademorin Kuye (APC, Lagos) said in preparing the annual budget, agencies of government should be mindful of the economic situation in the country.
He noted that the impression of Nigerians is that the National Assembly is rubber-stamp and will approve anything that is brought to them by government agencies.
Kuye said, “We are all aware of the situation in the country and we must be circumspect and be prudent in our expenditure because the general feeling out there is that the National Assembly is just a rubber stamp and whatever they bring is what we approve and that is not so.”
Chairman of the committee, Hon. Alhassan Ado Doguwa also faulted the language used by the agency in the preparation of its budget and the inclusion of the National Assembly as those benefiting from its welfare package.
Doguwa said since the committee was constituted, it has not visited the agency on oversight, wondering why they will be included in such welfare package, adding that the only welfare they House expect from them was the welfare of the Nigerian people.
“While I agree that the budget stops at our desk and you are just presenting a proposal, I will like to say that the economy is actually bad, the population of people for whom we are actually here are crying out. Agencies of government must be mindful of what they spend out of public resources.
“All these proposals are going to be spent at the expense of the Nigerian people. Sometimes, we come to make presentations here that sounds funny and very insulting in the eyes of the people. When you say in your projection things like welfare package inform of ex-gracia, health insurance, welfare packages to staff and some critical stakeholders during welfare packages.
“We will definitely try as much as possible to support you as long as you can justify the reasons for one expenditure or the other. Then the legislature will have no option than to support you and provide you with the enabling financial environment for you to discharge your duties and mandate,” he said.
The NEITI boss had told the panel that the agency was collaborating with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to recover about $6 billion and N66 billion stakeholders in the oil sector were owing the federal government.
He disclosed that the agency had presented all its reports in the extractive industry to the legislature, saying from the 2020 and 2021 report alone, over $3.7 billion was recovered to the government coffers as outstanding liabilities from companies operating in the oil and gas sector.