Ministries face Ogun assembly for 2012 budget defence

The Budget defence and appraisal is an important exercise, the legislators remind staff of the ministries.

Ministries and parastatals in Ogun State came before the State’s House of Assembly on Wednesday to defend the budget allocated to them.

Representatives of eight of the Ministries and Parastatals were present at the defence and of the eight Ministries, the Assembly was able to attend to only one because the account officers of seven others were not available.

The absent accounting officers were said to have traveled abroad alongside the governor for official duties.

The Ministry, which defended its budget before the House of Assembly, is the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The ministries, whose budget were deferred include, Ministry of Information and Strategy, Bureau of Information Technology, Centre for Arts and Culture, State Signage and Advertising Agency, Ogun State Television, Ogun State Broadcasting Corporation and Ogun State Printing Corporation.

In his speech, Speaker House of Assembly, Suraj Adekunbi, asserted that the on-going 2013 budget defense exercises is not a jamboree but one of the constitutional responsibilities of the House of Assembly.

He said the exercise was sequel to the presentation of the Appropriation bill by the State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun, on Tuesday November 20.

In his own remark, the Chairman, House Committee on Finance and Appropriation, Bankole Akanbi, warned that the Ogun State House of Assembly would not attend to any Ministry, Department or Agency whose chief Accounting officer fails to appear.

Mr. Bankole said the budget defence and appraisal is an important exercise.

He asked the officials concerned to brace up for the task ahead adding that the 2013 budget would be passed in time.

While giving an appraisal of the performance of 2012 budget, the commissioner for culture and tourism, Yewande Amusan, submitted that the Ministry was able to generate a sum of N4.4 million as against estimated N5 million.

She also disclosed that the state participated in the just concluded Abuja carnival as well as National Festival for Arts and culture in the outgoing year.

Ms. Amusan observed that in 2013, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism proposed to generate a sum of N10m as revenue while the total sum of N1.1b has been budgeted as total expenditure in the same period.

Giving the breakdown of the expenditure, Ms. Amusan noted that N300m would be spent on recurrent expenditure while N800m has been earmarked for capital expenditure.