Members of the House Committee on Maritime Safety, Education and Administration on Thursday threatened to give the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) zero allocation in the 2018 budget for spending below 10 percent of its capital budget in 2017.
The Chairman of the Committee, Mohammed Umar Bago, and his members were on an oversight function to the agency on Thursday.
The Chairman, after listening to a presentation on the agency 2017 budget performance, said the house cannot continue to appropriate money to agencies that will not be spent it.
Bago who also disclosed that the National Assembly had resolved to allocate in the 2018 budget the same amount spent on capital project in 2017 to any agency that refuses to spend its budget on capital project.
He said, “This is a direct threat to NIMASA. We are going to give them zero allocation in the 2018 budget for failing to spend above ten percent of their budget on capital project in 2017.”
“You are meant to spend funds allocated to you. It’s a shame if we give them (NIMASA) money to spend on appropriation and because of bureaucratic acumen they are unable to spend it.
“So, they shouldn’t expect us to give them money next time and we have pledged as a committee and as a parliament that anyone we give resources to spend and did not, we will only give in the next appropriation the percentage of what it spent in the previous year.
“I have threatened NIMASA I will give them zero allocation in 2018 if they don’t spend money allocated for 2017.”
In the budget presentation, government approved the sum of N169.1 billion as the agency’s total budget for 2017.
The Agency said that it appropriated the sum of N14.6 billion on capital projects, out of which it spent about N5.5billion on the same project, an amount which the parliamentarians said was not good enough.
But, in a swift reaction, the Director General of NIMASA, Dakuku Peterside disagreed with the committee chairman saying the agency has expended 80 percent of its allocation on capital project.
“I think we didn’t quite get the Chairman. We have made over 80 percent accomplishment of the capital budget provision though we have challenges in few because we have to go through the regimented procurement process.
“I believe that we should be able to get to 100 percent but if we can’t get to 100 percent with 80 percent accomplishment we have done our best,” he said countering the committee chair’s earlier assertion.
Also speaking on the Chairman’s complaint on the nation’s porous Exclusive Economic Zone and trading by foreign vessels, the DG stated that initiatives have been deployed to enhance security of the nation’s territorial water including the EEZ.
