The House of Representatives has yet to receive the detailed breakdown of the $1bn loan the National Assembly approved for President Goodluck Jonathan last July.
The loan was approved for procurement of military hardware and the training of members of the armed forces to beef up the war against Boko Haram insurgents.
Findings showed on Thursday that more than three months after the approval, the details remained unknown.
Lawmakers, while considering and approving the loan, had directed the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to provide the details of the facility andrepayment conditions.
The House had come under pressure to approve the loan after meetings with the minister on the issue did not yield results. The lawmakers had also reasoned that the House might be accused of frustrating the anti-terrorism war, if it failed to approve the loan.
A Joint Committee on Finance/Loans/Aids/Debt Management, which presented a report on the facility to the House, had told members that there was no information on the repayment conditions.
The committee also observed that details were lacking on how the various security agencies would benefit from the loan.
The report stated that the Army, Navy, Air Force, Nigeria Police Force and the Department of State Services were listed as the beneficiaries of the loan.
However, it noted that “not even these agencies know what exactly is coming to them as their share of the loan.”
The Lead Chairman of the joint committee, Mr. Abdulmumin Jibrin, had informed members that the committee held meetings with the agencies and the “response suggests that these details are not there yet.”
Although the House went ahead to approve the loan to support the anti-terrorism war, it still directed Okonjo-Iweala to produce the missing details.
We hear no such details had been provided.
“We have written the minister on the matter, we spoke with her as a reminder, yet till date, no response”, a National Assembly source told our correspondent.
When we sought the views of Jibrin, he confirmed that the details were yet to be made available.
Asked what further actions the House would take, Jibrin replied that the minister would not get away with it.He explained that the House was taking “things one at a time.”
Jibrin said, “The minister has a lot of issues to address. Look at the case of 2015-2017 Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks. It has not been resolved. Usually, we will not even touch it until we have a report on revenues and all that.
So, we will tackle all of these issues appropriately with the minister.”
Okonjo-Iweala’s Special Adviser on Communications, Paul Nwabuikwu, could not be reached for comments but a senior official in the ministry said the spending of the fund was being handled by the Office of the National Security Adviser and not the ministry.
The official said, “The $1bn loan has been approved but we are not directly involved in how it is being spent. That is the duties of the Office of the NSA.”
Punch newspaper
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