Almost halfway into financial year, Reps stop considerations on NAFDAC’s 2017 budget

The consideration of the 2017 budget of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) was on Tuesday stopped by the House of Representatives for lack of details.

The budget which had already passed first and second readings was stopped after it was noticed that the House Committee on Healthcare Services, who was to defend the proposals and report back to the plenary for approval failed to provide details on the budget.

The development is coming even as the financial circle of the 2017 budget has gone about five months, as it terminates at the end of May 2018, having gone into operation by June 2017.

President Muhammadu Buhari in preparation to lay the 2018 appropriation bill before the National Assembly, had two weeks ago, forwarded the 2018- 2020 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) to both chambers as a prelude to the presentation of the 2018 budget this week.

The chairman of the committee, Chike Okafor, was also unavailable when the report of the committee was due for consideration at the plenary on Tuesday.

The deputy chairman of the committee, Mr. Mohammed Usman, had moved for the consideration of the budget in absence of Okafor.

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Speaker Yakubu Dogara upon noticing that the proposal lacked details said the House cannot proceed.
“What is worth doing is worth doing well. This is not how we handle budgets in the House. There have to be details attacked. Without the details, we can’t proceed, he said.

Usman, who read the document by the committee, only gave the block figures of the budget.

The budget overhead cost as stated by the Federal Government’s appropriation is N7.5 billion; while the overhead proposal from Internally Generated Revenue and other sources is N8.2 billion. The personnel cost is N4.4bn.

 

 

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