Senate wants Lai Mohammed to account for controversial N250m project

The Senate told the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, that he had a lot of explanation to make on a controversial N250 million project allocated to his ministry.

This happened on Tuesday when the minister led other top officials of his Ministry to the Senate to defend the ministry’s 2021 budget estimates.

The project tagged ERPG 10145116, and listed as ‘completion of NTA Gashua sub-station ongoing’, has been fully funded by the Ministry of Finance for execution by the Information Ministry in the 2020 fiscal year.

Wondering how N250 million meant for the project got fully released to the ministry, the chairman of Senate Committee on Information, Abdullahi Sankara, insisted that Mohammed had a lot of explanations to make over the project.

Sankara expressed concern that funds for the project was released 100 per cent without any work commensurate to the full releases done on sight.

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The minister had earlier told the lawmakers that the project was sponsored by a lawmaker as a constituency project and was inserted into his Ministry’s 2020 budget.

But the senators, denying that the project was a constituency project, took turns to throw questions at Mohammed over the project.

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