By Levinus Nwabughiogu
House of Representatives committee on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and Humanitarian matters yesterday suspended the consideration of budget performance by the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced over late submission of documents.
The Committee reached the resolution via a motion by Rep. Awaji Inombek Dagomie Abiante (PDP, Rivers).
He said that members needed time to study the performance of the 2020 to know the level of implementation of the subheads before giving their approval to the new proposal.
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He said: “We are here trying to birth a new Nigeria that our generation unborn can be proud of, and in doing so, we must do due diligence by critically looking at the books presented before us.”
Abiante therefore lmoved that the chairman steps down the consideration to allow members study the 2020 performance performance as documented by the commissioner with a view to doing a good job of assessing it.
With the motion seconded, the consideration was stepped down till further notice.
Meanwhile, the commissioner in charge of the Refugees agency, Sen Bashir Garba Mohammed, had earlier told the committee that the sum of N5.7bn was appropriated for the agency as capital and recurrent expenditure in 2020, adding that the amount represent 36.5% increase from 2019.
He said Overhead was N29m, further stated that the commission just awarded contracts due to the delay occasioned by covid-19 pandemic.
He said out of the total sum, only N4.2m for overhead has been released so far.
The sum of N2.1bn was approved for zonal intervention (constituency) projects for lawmakers.
He however added that “the Commission has capacity and full willingness to execute projects appropriation for in the 2020 budget”, appealing to the committee to help the agency extend the life of its capital budget implementation.
