Information ministry to spend N661m on travelling/refreshment

As Nigerians expect quick recovery of the country from the economic recession, it is also expected that the Federal Government would drive the recovery plan by blocking all leakages in the nation’s budget implementation.

But this seems not to be in the plans of the Minister of Information and Culture, which has proposed to spend N661,006,782 million on travelling and transportation, refreshment and miscellaneous in the 2017 fiscal year.

The amount is part of the N49,464,302,080billion allocated to the ministry from the N7.3 trillion appropriation bill for 2017currently before the National Assembly.

A breakdown of the amount showed that the sum of N273,706,901m is allocated to travelling and transportation, N347, 299,681 to miscellaneous, whereas N40m will be spent on refreshment in the fiscal year.

Vanguard checks showed that the sum of N50m will be spent on scanning and keeping of official records. Our findings showed that from the total allocation, only N8,380,248,826 will be spent on capital projects, while N41,084,053,254 is for recurrent expenditure of the ministry.

Other areas expected to take the chunk of the allocation of the ministry include, grassroots publicity and enlightenment campaign on government policies and programmes, which has another N409,240,600, while N100m will be spent on interaction with stakeholders.

The ministry also in the year in view is expected to spend N192,863,901 on publicity and advertisement and another N270 million for hosting of town hall meetings across the country.

Also for the year, N97.2 million has been earmarked for procurement of motor vehicles for the ministry, while another N50m is allocated to the annual Abuja Carnival and National Creativity week in 2017.

Similarly, the sum of N88m, will go into operation and maintenance of cultural centres abroad in China and Brazil. For welfare and sporting activities, the ministry is to spend N69,140,907 and N12,909,380 respectively for the year in view. Part of the capital projects contained in the budget include acquisition of tangible assets which got N447,554,559m from the capital allocation.

This is in addition to N88,995,701 proposed for maintenance services by the ministry. However, N29, 311,283 and N35,476,295 were earmarked for office rent and other maintenance services in the ministry.