…directs REA boss to rectify lopsidedness
The Nigerian Senate on Wednesday rejected a proposal to cite as many as 20 power projects in Lau Local Government Area of Taraba State from where the Minister of Power, Mamman Saleh, hails.
The Senate Committee on Power, which was verifying the 2021 budget proposals of the Rural Electrification Agency, consequently suspended the exercise. It asked the managing director of REA, Ahmad Salijo, to reappear before it after correcting the lopsidedness.
This followed the discovery by committee members of 20 rural electrification projects of varying amounts of between N20m and N52m in the 2021 budget proposal submitted to the National Assembly.
The members expressed dissatisfaction with the proposal, given that the record indicated that only one of the electrification projects for 2021 in the entire South-South geopolitical zone was proposed to be cited in Delta State.
Senator Yusuf Yusuf, a member of the committee who is from Taraba, drew the attention of the members to the uneven distribution of the projects.
“It is not just the N52m but if you look at from number 85, N30m, N20m, N40m, and they are all concentrated in one Local Government Area,” he said.
“That is the minister’s LGA. Twenty projects are in Lau Local Government Area. I am not challenging him but I am sure.”
