About seven federal agencies which their Chief Executives had refused to appear before the Senate Joint Committee on Finance and National Planning, to defend their proposals in the 2021-2023 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP), after being duly invited, suffer the risk of zero budget within the period under review, Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Solomon Adeola, has threatened.
Sen. Adeola issued the threat while presiding over a five-day stakeholders’ interactive session on the 2021-2023 MTEF/FSP, which began in Abuja, Wednesday.
He listed the agencies to include: Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Nigeria Shippers Council (NSC), Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG).
Adeola said, “All agencies that are supposed to appear today that are not here must appear tomorrow unfailingly, led by the heads of the respective agencies. This Committee will not attend to any head of an agency by proxy. It should also be put on record that if they refuse to appear to defend the briefs that we have from the Executive, we will not hesitate to ensure that such defaulting agencies have zero budgets for next year.
“It is a must for heads of agencies to appear because this document was put together by the Executive and we need all the heads of agencies to come and defend what is before us. So, any head of agency that fails to appear should as well know that for 2021 – 2023, there will be no budget for it,” Adeola emphasised.
- Pix: Godwin Emefiele, CBN Gov