The Federal Ministry of Finance has countered the claims of the military that underfunding was a major factor responsible for the rising cases of insecurity in Nigeria.
Consequently, the Senate Committee on Army has summoned the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, the Director General of the Budget Office, Professor Ben Akabueze and the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru to appear before it next Tuesday to explain details of the funds so far released to the Nigerian Army to tackle insecurity, from 2019 till date.
According to the Permanent Secretary, Special Duties in the Ministry of Finance, Aliyu Shinkafi who appeared before the Committee showed that a total of N197.84billion had been released to the military authorities from 2019 to date.
Shinkafi said; “The sum of N75billion was appropriated and released in 2019 while additional N7billion appropriated from the service wide vote was also released 100 per cent.
“The sum of N2.5billion was also released in 2019. In 2020, N75billion was appropriated but N74.99billon was released.
“In the current year, N100billion had been appropriated and we have released N19.4billion for the first quarter. Just yesterday (Wednesday), we released N19.95billion for the second quarter…I believe that we are on course as far as releases for these operations are concerned.”
Letter from Defence headquarters
However, the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Ali Ndume, brought out a letter from the Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor where he said that the military authorities complained that they had shortfall as far as releases from the Ministry of Finance was concerned.
“The letter from the Defence headquarters on the funding of Operations Lafiya Dole is claiming that they have a shortfall of N50billion in terms of releases and requested us to do a follow up on the matter,” Senator Ndume stated.
On the contrary, the Permanent Secretary insisted that all the amount appropriated to fight all forms of insecurity had been released.
It was at this point that the Committee Chairman asked the Ministry officials to come with details of the releases at Tuesday’s meeting.
Senator Ndume had expressed disappointment that the Minister shunned the invitation of his panel despite the importance of the issue at stake.
In his words, “Honestly, we are not happy that the Minister of Finance is not here today despite the fact that she was duly invited and she knew the importance of the issue we invited her to discuss with us.
“There is nothing that is more important that she could be attending to than the serious problem of insecurity all over Nigeria at the moment. We were blaming the military but the soldiers are claiming that they have no equipment, arms and ammunition to work with because there was no money to buy them.
“We have invited the Minister now to explain why her Ministry was not funding the operations of the Army and she is not here. This is not acceptable.”
Mercy Chukwudiebere
