ABUJA—THE Senate Committee on Defence and Army, yesterday, demanded how the over N1.275 billion budgeted to the Ministry of Defence in the 2014 fiscal year was spent.
Meantime, the Senate Committee on Defence has frowned at the attitude of the Minister of Defence, General Aliu Gusau for not attending budget defence in the senate and directed that he should get in touch with the committee whenever he was around.
The committee demanded to know how the defence 2014 budget was spent when the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Aliyu Ismaila who represented the minister appeared before it to defend the ministry’s 2015 budget.
Chairman, Senate committee on Defence, Senator George Sekibo in a bid to get the records of expenditure of the ministry for 2014 directed the Permanent Secretary to furnish the committee with details of the expenditure within one week.
The details demanded by Senator Sekibo was the fund appropriated for the ministry under the subhead of security vote including operations/ration and allowances for Brigade of Guards.
The Senate Committee Chairman wondered whether the allocation was not duplication since Service Wide Vote which was provided for in the year under review covered the issue of security vote for Brigade of Guards.
Senators Babafemi Ojudu and Sani Salle who are members of the committee also demanded to know the reasons why the office of the National Security Adviser, NSA, handled the issue of buying arms and ammunitions instead of the ministry handling such purchases.
The Senators wanted to know whether the office of the NSA had hijacked the function of the ministry.
In his explanation, Senator Sekibo said it was agreed that the end user should be responsible for the purchase of arm and ammunitions.
On the question why the ministry always bring to the budget the same items that were budgeted and supplied in the previous year, the Permanent Secretary said that though he had tried to query such development when he joined the ministry, but added that he later discovered that because the ministry is large, some of the items bought were not enough.
Ismaila further explained that the Services under the ministry look up to the ministry for policy direction and that the relationship between the ministry and the Services under it was cordial.
The committee, however, suspended consideration of 2015 budget proposal because of what Sekibo called disparity in figures as the figures with the ministry was different from the figures with the committee which was due to the reverse in the oil benchmark, the exchange rate and the dwindling global market price of oil.(Vanguard)
