The Senate on Tuesday tackled the Minister of information,
Lai Mohammed, over a controversial project fully funded by the Ministry of
Finance for execution by his Ministry in the 2020 fiscal year.
The project was tagged ERPG 10145116, and was listed as
‘completion of NTA Gashua sub-station ongoing’.
The project had its allocation of N250m fully released to
the Ministry.
The Minister led other top officials of his Ministry to the Senate on Tuesday o defend their 2021 budget estimates.
Chairman, Senate Committee on information, Abdullahi
Sankara, maintained that the Minister has a lot of explanations to make over
the project.
He said that it was 100 per cent release of funds without
any work commensurate to the full releases done on sight.
The controversy over the project started when the Minister
explained that the project was sponsored by a lawmaker as a constituency
project and inserted the same into his Ministry’s 2020 budget.
Senators present at the panel took exception to Mohammed’s
explanation.
The lawmakers took turns to query the Minister over the
project, insisting that it was not a constituency project.
Details later…
Lai Mohammed again at it. No wonder he wants to gag the social media and leave NTA through which he will be bleeding our funds. Why not scrap NTA completely if the NASS is not complicit in all these misinformation and deceit. Of what use is the NTA if not for Government propaganda and lies and protection of corruption? Can the NTA justify the huge sums of money being spent on it💰? We will get balanced reporting from private media including social media and not this propaganda apparatus of Government designed to covert corruption by putting alternate false narrative always. Never risen up to the challenge as those appointed to operate it such Lai Mohammed are compromised already even before they began.
ReplyDeleteThe world is watching the NASS on this one.
ReplyDelete