For the failure of their heads to make appearances to defend the performance of the 2012 budget in their agencies, the Federal House of Representatives has threatened zero budget allocation to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the National Drug and Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
Chairman of the House Committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes, Hon. Jagaba Adams Jagaba, speaking at Wednesday’s meeting of the committee, berated Ibrahim Lamorde of EFCC and Ahmed Giade of NDLEA for failing to honour their invitations by the committee, saying both agencies had impeded ongoing efforts to assess the 2012 budget performance during the scheduled oversight function initiated by the committee.
Secretary of the EFCC, Emmanuel Akomaye, who led other officials of the commission, explained that Lamorde had travelled for an important assignment before the notice was received last Monday.
“The chairman got the notice of his journey last Friday; we got the invitation last Monday and we even contemplated asking for this meeting to be shifted but due to the exigency of time we decided to come,” Akomaye said.
Jagaba later asked journalists and the EFCC team to leave the room to allow a very brief closed-door meeting. When it was over and the larger meeting resumed, the committee chairman disclosed that EFCC’s defence had been shifted till Monday but that Chairman Lamorde must be present to defend the commission’s budget as its head.
“When we came for the oversight of the commission to see the level of implementation of the 2012 budget, the chairman was not around,” Jagaba recalled. “You promised that he would come and see this committee; till now, he has not come. Now this is playing out. There are some questions you (Akomaye) could not answer when members of this committee asked you. There are some things you have to defend but which you may not be able to.”
When the NDLEA delegation, led by director-general of the agency, Mr. Femi Ajayi, said Giade was ill and could not make the budget defence, members of the committee expressed their sympathy but insisted that the same rule applied to EFCC would be used on them.
“There is no justification for the heads of the two agencies not to prioritise the defence of their budgets at a time Nigerians are complaining of the poor implementation of the 2012 budget,” Jagaba added.
