N762m Office Partitioning Fund …NASS Queries DPR

The National Assembly joint committees on Petroleum (Upstream), has described the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) as a clear picture of a lame institution and a total collapse in terms of its operations and management of its budgetary allocations.

This followed the joint committees consideration of the institution’s 2010 budget performance and its current proposal for 2011 at the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and her agency’s 2011 budget defence at the National Assembly complex.

The National Assembly members were grossly dumb-founded to see another proposal for the partitioning and furnishing of the agency’s Abuja office to the tune of N117million when the same budgetary item had claimed over N565 million over the last two years; N430million in 2009 budget, N215million in 2010 and now N117 million in the 2011 budget proposal for the same partitioning and furnishing of the same office building in Abuja.

The lawmakers were disappointment over the institution’s management of funds appropriated to it through the national budget. They pointed fingers at recurring budget items and worse still the alarming increase in the annual budget, from N9billion in 2009 to N30billion in 2011 budget proposal with about N24billionexpenditure profile in year 2010 budget.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Upstream), Senator Lee Maeba, did not mince words describing the institution as a non-performing one , whose budgetary allocations kept rising annually with nothing to show for it.

“DPR is not run by DPR but run by the ministry, an institution where Government is spending all the money and is getting nothing out of it”.

Senator Maeba recalled that in 2008 , DPR had asked for N450million for the procurement of an office accommodation in Abuja, N430 million in 2009 for the partitioning and furnishing of the office, in 2010 N215 million for the same partitioning and again in the 2011 it is asking for another N117million for the same partitioning.

All the lawmakers in the committee expressed the same feeling towards the agency’s budget.

Responding to the lawmakers inquires, the Director, DPR, Wada Gbenga tried to defend the allocations for the partitioning which , he said was still on going at the moment and had been costing the institution that much.

Nneka Amaechi- Nnadi,Abuja