Senate Seeks Financial Autonomy For FERMA

The Senate Committee on the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), has expressed its readiness to separate the budget of the agency from that of the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing.
However, the Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN), expressed reservations on the implications of the proposed action.
The Senate Committee on FERMA made the intention known to the Minister and FERMA officials during a budget defence session at the National Assembly.
The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Gershom Bassey, said the Senate intended to create a separate envelope system for FERMA, independent of the Ministry of Works and Housing.
“We have observed that FERMA is a semi-independent agency. We are thinking of bringing out the budget of FERMA from the ministry’s envelope so the agency will deal with its own finances.
“We think it is a better way to go. So that we don’t have to be summoning the ministry each time we want to have engagement with FERMA.
“We want to know the criteria that you used to allocate funds from your ministry’s envelope to FERMA.
“We also want to know how we can help your ministry and FERMA to be more efficient. We only want to remove the budgetary envelope and not the supervisory responsibilities of the agency.
“We want you to provide information on the two issues and send your responses to us.”
In his response, Fashola said, “I understand and align with the necessity and purpose of setting up parastatals. They are crucial for the implementation of government policies.
“I believe that in the process and speed to create FERMA, we left certain things behind. It is important to look at those things here.
“One of the things we left behind was the institutional capacities in the ministries. For instance, in the old federal roads camps that we were using to provide assessment and maintenance for FERMA, we left the Federal Controllers of Works out and they are still there in all the states.”