From: Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Usani Uguru Usani, has disclosed that sum of N131 billion was required to complete all ongoing developmental projects in nine states that made up the Niger Delta region.
Usani said that the developmental projects, located in different communities in the region, were initiated by his predecessors and are at several stages of completion, attributing the abandonment to inadequate funding of regional programmes by successive administrations.
The Minister, who appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Niger Delta, in Abuja, to defend his 2017 budget proposal, lobbied the lawmakers to allocate more resources to the ministry to enable it effectively carry out its statutory responsibilities, particularly in promoting infrastructural and human capital development, in addition to sustaining the fragile peace in the region.
“The budgetary need of the ministry has consistently being on the increase, as a result of inflation and other economic development that has adversely affected the cost of projects in the region.
“For the Ministry to successfully complete all its projects between now and 2018, we need far in excess of the N131 billion which we earlier requested. Reason being that on daily basis, there are recurrent issues of financial demand, which has been worsened by the rising inflation rate.”
Meanwhile, the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Niger Delta, Hon. Essien Ayi, reasoned that there was need improvement in the budgetary allocations to the ministry because of the key role it play in infrastructural and human capital development of the region.
The total budgetary proposal of the Ministry in year 2017 appropriation is N35, 501,382, 365.00. The personnel cost was put at N1, 081,793,241, while N727, 081,124.00 was for overhead and N33, 692,500,000.00 was proposed for capital projects.
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