A Government divided against itself: Ministers fuelling budget fight – Investigation.

BEHIND the lingering fight between the Executive  and the House of Representatives over the 2012 budget implementation are ministers and other heads of government agencies and departments, investigation by The PUNCH has revealed.
This is in addition to the fact that discreet complaints by top government officials to the lawmakers had initially triggered the anger of the Reps who on July 19 handed a September deadline to President Goodluck Jonathan to push the implementation of the budget to 100 per cent or face impeachment proceedings.
Sources at the National Assembly on Monday confirmed to our correspondents that top officials of the Jonathan administration were still complaining to lawmakers that they were not receiving enough fund to execute capital projects.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Gas, Sen. Nkechi Nwaogu, on Monday said there were still complaints of non-release of funds by the MDAs.
Nwaogu, who is a member of the Joint Committee that heard the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on Thursday, however, said the complaints of non-release of funds by the MDAs and the minister’s claims that funds had been released would need to be confirmed.
She said, “We did not push the matter further because there is no way we can immediately confirm that the agencies have received funding as stated by the minister since we are still on break.
“When we return we will go and confirm during oversight. I want to believe that the minister is aware that she spoke on record and before the Senate.”
According to Nwaogu, Okonjo-Iweala informed the committee that agencies that had not received funds for their projects might be those whose projects were still undergoing due process at the Bureau of Public Procurement.
It was gathered that there had been communication between the MDAs and the National Assembly on budget implementation.
Investigations showed that the MDAs complained about due process, which did not allow for prompt release of funds.
At the Ministry of Finance, a source said on Monday that the MDAs were aggrieved and that they had been complaining to the lawmakers.
He however said the problem was caused by the procurement law because based on the procurement act, it would take a minimum of two months to complete the process of awarding contracts.
The source said, “A lot of money has been released but the procurement law is causing the delay in its utilisation and there is no way MDAs can speed up the process because if they do, people will complain that the process of awarding contracts isn’t transparent and an aggrieved party can sue such MDAs for violating the procurement law.
“We began the actual implementation of the capital aspect of this budget by April 1 and we have just done about four months. So we hope that most of the MDAs would have gone far with their contract process to pave the way for actual utilisation of the funds at their disposal.
“We are aware of the delay in awarding contracts and that is why we are working seriously to submit the 2013 budget by September so that its implementation can begin by January of next year.
Checks by The PUNCH have confirmed that many ministers and heads of government agencies had been briefing the lawmakers about fund releases to them since the Reps decided to breathe down on the Executive.
Findings however showed that many MDAs had received “massive release of funds” from the Ministry of Finance in the last three weeks and that activities at the different ministries have been picking up.
Our correspondents learnt that activities at the Ministry of Works headquarters in Abuja, in particular, had picked up as “contractors are being called to sign for their cheques.”
A lawmaker who craved anonymity because he is not the spokesperson for the House said, “Without the officials at the MDAs how do you expect us to be getting feedback on the performance of the Executive generally?
“There is nothing bad in a minister or head of government agency feeding the lawmaker from his constituency whether he is given fund to perform or not; it is not a matter of not being loyal to the President or being a mole. If at the end of the day, such a minister or whoever does not perform, nobody would remember that he was starved of fund while in office.
“The minister from my own constituency has been briefing me, there is nothing bad in that.”
It was learnt that the MDAs have been passing the buck of the poor performance of the 2012 budget to the Minister of Finance, Dr.  Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, accusing her of reluctance to release adequate funds to finance capital projects.
The agencies complained that although some funds were released, they were insufficient for the award of contracts as required by the Public Procurement Act.
The Act provides that contracts cannot be awarded unless there is sufficient funds provided for the execution of the contracts.
Leader of the  Senate, Victor Ndoma-Egba, who stopped short of confirming the  report, said complaints made to  any committee of the   Senate  were as good as being received by the entire Senate.
“If a committee of the Senate goes on oversight and receives a complaint from   an agency, it is the Senate that has  received the complaint and it will be necessary to act appropriately,” he  said.
On what the Senate would do after   receiving briefings  from  Okonjo-Iweala, Ndoma-Egba said the Senate would wait for   the report of the Joint Committee  before taking any further  steps.