President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua yesterday sought the endorsement of the National Assembly for a N352.2 billion supplementary appropriation to enable the Federal Government address emerging challenges of the post-amnesty period in the Niger Delta region. The supplementary budget was received in the House of Representatives on a day the chamber adopted two motions urging the Federal Government to intervene urgently in the deplorable condition of major federal roads in two Niger Delta states of Edo and Akwa Ibom. These include the access road linking Akwa Ibom, Abia, Rivers and Cross River States. The other is the rehabilitation of the Benin-Auchi-Okene Expressway, which is said to have been cut into two at Iruekpen, a few kilometres from the Ambrose Ali University, Ekpoma, Edo State. At the Senate, Minister of Finance Mansur Muhtar briefed the Senators for about two hours in a closed-door session outlining the shape and focus of the supplementary budget. According to the Chairman, Senate Committee on Information and Media, Senator Ayogu Eze, Muhtar told the upper legislative house that the Presidency would also request virement of funds in this year’s budget to execute crucial post-amnesty development projects. Muhtar informed the House that the supplementary budget was occasioned by a number of factors, including the urgency of consolidating and sustaining peace in the Niger Delta; the need to put in place strategic interventions geared towards addressing the transitional costs, which would accompany envisaged reforms in the downstream sector of the petroleum industry as well as meeting additional expenditure needs of government. The President said that it had become extremely important that the government embarked on projects, which would help deepen and consolidate peace as well as lay foundations for sustainable development in the Niger Delta. Projects earmarked for execution as part of the post-amnesty package are the East-West highway currently under construction, coastal roads and highways, East-West rail line, inland waterway transportation infrastructure, reclamation to link all communities, dredging of canals, housing and land reclamation projects for oil-producing communities and environmental clean up activities. Yar’Adua said: “This is crucial to rebuilding confidence and trust in the amnesty initiative, enhancing production and improving revenue flow to the federation account, mitigating investment risks as well as boosting full realisation of the nation’s economic potential. “In addition to the amnesty programme-related expenditure, we are seeking to invest in programmes and projects that would address the transition costs of envisaged reforms in the downstream petroleum sector. In this context, the government is proposing additional interventions in the rail and road transportation sectors, as well as emergency road rehabilitation. These are being complemented with measures to facilitate access to low income housing for workers, as well as support to the real sector through development finance institutions.” According to the President, the proposed expenditure items would be financed from the Federal Government’s share of the Excess Crude Account, proceeds of the soft loan from the World Bank, the use of existing issuance of Federal Government Bonds by the Debt Management Office (DMO) as well as the balance of unspent funds from the 2009 budget. The money to be appropriated, he said, would be “ring fenced” under a similar arrangement made in respect of funding for the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) while appropriate control and reporting mechanisms would be put in place to ensure transparency and accountability. The President urged the House to ensure a speedy passage of the supplementary budget as the massive road and rail projects would reduce the cost of transportation, make available alternative sources of transportation, seek avenues for reducing the cost of living as well as generate employment opportunities. The budget, he said, would also be used to finance strategic interventions aimed at addressing supply constraints and unemployment in the context of the global economic meltdown. About $2 billion was reportedly shared among the three tiers of government from the Excess Crude Account without approval by the National Assembly. Once the federal legislature approves the supplementary budget, it would have given retroactive approval to the extra-constitutional expenditure. Defending the appropriateness of a supplementary appropriation at the tail of the fiscal year, Eze said the budget was to correct some distortions that occurred in the main appropriation. According to him, “Sometimes budget is also a corrective instrument. There are resources of government that were not anticipated at the time that the budget was prepared and, of course, you know that the fortunes of our oil revenue have also continued to improve. “Some of those accruals are supposed to be captured. It is certain that some of the things that are coming are crucial projects which government had already embarked upon. And I know that some of the virements are also to correct…” Eze said President Yar’Adua would also, barring any change in plan, address the joint session of the National Assembly to present his 2010 budgetary proposals on November 19. He said while briefing Senate correspondents: “About 1pm or thereabouts, we shut our doors to discuss with the Minister of Finance and his team. We discussed a number of crucial issues. “Number one, that the government is going to bring a supplementary appropriation and the government is also bringing a request for virement because certain crucial projects had to be attended to in the light of certain developments, one of them being the amnesty and the necessity to consolidate the gains of amnesty in the Niger Delta region with certain projects and contracts.” He said the other issue was “the inability of some Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to spend money that has been allocated to them; whereas there are other MDAs that have the capacity and urgent projects that need to be completed before the end of the year. “So we are expecting that; we are also expecting that with all things going well, the President and Commander-in -Chief of the Armed Forces will present the 2010 budget to the National Assembly on November 19; and, after that, work can now commence effectively. “But right now, the minister took a number of questions on issues that are likely to inform what will determine the final shape of the 2010 budget. We also took him up on issues of the performance of the 2009 appropriation and the performance of other appropriations down the years.” Eze said there was “a mutual and very frank discussion and I think that arising from that discussion, if we all tap from the ideas and the energies generated from the discussions, there is every hope that budget performance and implementation will continue to improve from year to year”. Meanwhile, the House has passed two motions seeking the intervention of the Federal Government on the dilapidated roads in parts of the Niger Delta. In the first motion, Chairman of the House Committee on Rules and Business, Hon. Ita Enang, and 52 others drew the attention of the House to the collapse of the access road from Akwa Ibom, Abia, Rivers and Cross River. Enang, who led the debate, noted that the Uyo-Itu-Calabar highway, which is the only road linking Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Rivers States as well as the Calabar-Ikom-Ogoja-Katsina Ala-Makurdi in Benue State was in a poor state and had become a problem to commuters. He said that the Calabar-Itu-Uyo-Ikot Ekpene road constructed in 1976 had completely collapsed and rendered unmotorable in the last five months. He urged the Federal Ministry of Works and the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) to urgently reconstruct these roads to restore access to, from and between Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Abia and Rivers State as links to other parts of the country. Enang also urged the House to mandate its Committee on Works to inspect the roads and report its findings to the House within two weeks. Similarly, Hon. Patrick Ikhariale (PDP Edo) urged FERMA to rehabilitate the Benin-Auchi-Okene road ahead of the yuletide season and the heavy vehicular traffic expected to be on the road. He also urged the Minister of Works to lay before the House Committee on Works and Transport, measures being taken to rehabilitate the entire road network across the country. Both motions were unanimously adopted.
Nov52009