Senate Rejects PPRA Budget

What was supposed to be a budget defence meeting between the National Assembly Joint committees on Petroleum (Upstream) and the management of the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), yesterday was disrupted as the committee walked out the PPPRA team who had difficulties defending a large chunk of their allocations in the 2013 budget proposal.

The lawmakers were virtually pushed to the wall as the agency failed to produce any justification for even its Internal Generated Revenue (IGR) and the administrative charges.

In the Agency’s budget proposal, as contained in the 2013 fiscal projections, a sum of N5.7billion was allocated as salaries and allowances of 247 staff.

This revelation and others informed question by the lawmakers led by Senator Magnus Abe sought answers to some inputs in the budget. Strangely, the Executive Secretary, Reginald Stanley and other members of the management team failed to provide answers to the various questions.

That forced the lawmakers to walk out the entire team, and subsequently called off the meeting indefinitely.

In his earlier presentation, outlining the breakdown of the agency’s expenditure in 2012 budget before the Joint Committee, the executive secretary also failed to explain the 15 kobo which the PPPRA collect on every litre of fuel sold in the country for administrative charges.

Chairman of the joint committee, Senator Magnus Abbe accordingly called off the hearing, warning that the era of extra-budgetary expenditure was over as the committee would no longer condone such frivolities.

“What I want to bring to our attention is the attitude of some of our operators in the sector who always think that except appropriations are drawn directly from the consolidated revenue fund, they are not accountable to parliament for it. I want to make it very, very clear that any money that comes through you, or to you or is expended through any agency as part of your public responsibility is subject to review by the people of Nigeria and the National Assembly that represents the interests of the people of Nigeria.

He said, “So, nobody can receive money on behalf of the Nigerian people, spend it on his own behalf without reference to the National Assembly. I say it, in particular to those agencies that are by law allowed to generate and make their own expenditure that all those expenditures that are not drawn directly on the national budget must also come here and be approved by parliament.

“And except it is approved, nobody should spend any money or disburse any fund that is not pre-approved by parliament. So if that has been going on in the past, I believe that in this meeting today, we should put a final stop to it; it shouldn’t happen again,” he emphasized.

Other members of the committee also took turns to express their disappointment in the way and manner agencies treat public fund expenditure with no regards to the provisions of the constitution.