2022 BUDGET: Environment Ministry Spends N12m on 8-Page Document, Votes N110m For Anniversaries

2022 BUDGET: Environment Ministry Spends N12m on 8-Page Document, Votes N110m For Anniversaries

October 17, 2021

Eight A4 pages of budget proposal for the fiscal year 2022, by the Ministry of Environment has cost Nigerian taxpayers, the sum of N12 million, the ministry said. 

The curious expenditure was captured from pages 2,080 to 2,087, serially coded 0535001001, of the 2,168 pages of the Appropriation bill presented to the joint session of the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari. 

Tagged: “Annual Budget Expenses and Administration” with a specific code in the budget, it reads “Annual Budget Expenses and Administration N11,950,000” as amount for the expenditure in the 2021 Appropriation Act. For the ministry of environment, the amount could not support the challenges associated with preparation of the future budget of 2023 fiscal year. Thus, it has proposed the sum of “N17, 300,000” for the year preparation of the 2023 budget in the 2022 fiscal year. 

Newsmen gathered that the sum of about twelve million (N11,950,00) was used in this 2021 fiscal year, to produce the extant eight page document, put before the national assembly. 

Besides the seemingly huge allocation for the preparation of expenses by the headquarters of the ministry in Mabushi, Abuja, some of its agencies followed suit with the Oyo National Park which had a total capital allocation of 105,955,682 and proposed N349,000 to prepare the 2023 budget. Oyo National Park was captured with the serial code 0535004001. 

Its budget estimate are contained in three pages, 2094 to 2096. Other agencies with similar curious expenditure are the GashakaGumti Park, N100,123; Cross River National Park which proposed N502, 999.00 for the two-page budget proposals. 

For the Kamuku, National Park and Okumu National Park, they proposed N360,000.00 and N270,000.00 respectively. Special days on the environment would cost Nigerians over N100 million to celebrate, in the 2022 fiscal year, the ministry of environment maintained in its proposed budget to the National Assembly. 

An investigations revealed that anniversaries and celebrations would cost an expenditure of N110,732,000 for the year 2022.

This amount recorded a shortfall of N42,556,00 from the ongoing expenses of N153,288,000 for the same purposes, in the current fiscal year in the ministry’s headquarters at Mabushi Abuja. 

The ministry proposed to spend the sum of N17, 739,741,576, (seventeen billion, seven hundred and thirty-nine million, seven hundred and forty one thousand, five hundred seventy six hundred) naira for erosion and flood control for the same year, this figure was about 53 per cent increase of the same charge in the ongoing year. 

Further investigations revealed that the ministry’s expenditure for the current fiscal year for “erosion and flood control” was N9.1billion.