My Nigeria…

The House of Representatives yesterday passed the N683 billion Supplementary Appropriation Bill 2008. The bill which was similarly passed by the Senate last week sailed through at the lower chambers of the National Assembly after the House in plenary had received the report of the Committee on Appropriation on it.
Before passing the bill, the legislators went through the various sections of the additional expenditure proposed by President Umar Musa Yar Adua and directed the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) to ensure the release of the appropriated funds before the December 31, 2008 deadline set in the budget.
The House warned that no part of the amount shall be released from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federation after the end of the current year.The supplementary budget seeks to authorise the issuance from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federation a total sum of N683,301,968,287 only.
Out of this, N220,241,326,816 is for recurrent expenditure while the balance of N463,060,641,471 is meant for capital expenditure and part of Federal Government’s contribution to the funding of the emergency power projects.
With the passage of the bill, the Accountant General of the Federation, through a warrant of the Minister of Finance, has been mandated to release to the affected ministries and agencies the funds allocated to them from the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, Honourable Ayo Adeseun, said that all amounts appropriated under the Act must be released from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federation and applied only for the purposes specified in the schedule to the Act.
Adeseun, however, noted that in the events that a need arises to vire amounts within the heads of expenditure to which sums have been appropriated under the Act, such virement shall only be effected, with prior approval of the National Assembly.
He observed that in line with the key objective of the bill, strategic ministries, departments and agencies such as Defence, Transportation, Finance, Energy, Labour and Productivity and others have been appropriated for in the Supplementary Budget to complete ongoing projects.

Some lawmakers had expressed reservations on the apparent lateness of the budget and the need to extend its implementation date to March 31st 2009, but the idea was defeated with the Appropriation committee insisting that the deadline must be observed. The House however urged the Executive to ensure the full implementation of the budget, especially the application of the funds to the targeted projects. Also yesterday the House of Representatives passed the bill mandating all mobile telecommunications service providers in the country to begin registration of all subscribers on their networks in order to stem the tide of crimes and other anti social activities being pepertrated by some unscrupulous mobile phone users.With the passage of the bill, mobile phone operators in the country including MTN, Globacom, Zain, Starcomms and others would be required by law to keep relevant information about their subscribers so that in the event that such lines are used to perpetrate fraud or any other illegal activities their owners could be traced and prosecuted.The bill sponsored by Honourable Akeem Arole-Fancy ( SurulereII Federal Constituency of Lagos State) enjoyed tremendous support from lawmakers at the plenary as several of them commented on the need to ensure the safety of the networks and subscribers in view of the national security implications of having millions of anonymous subscibers in Africa’s fastest growing telecommunications market.Fancy had in his presentation on the floor, argued that the Nigerian Communications Act (NCC) 2003 was deficient in addressing the novel challenge of crimes posed by the advent of mobile telephony in the country.