THE Senate has begun moves against what it described as
reckless spending by state governors, just as it has put in place machinery to
ensure that there was proper utilization of loans collected by respective state
governors...
According to the Senate, the action has become
imperative against the backdrop that it was really disturbed by complaints from
Nigerians over non utilization utilization of foreign loans collected by their
respective state governments for projects execution with attendant rising debt
profile. To achieve this, the Senate yesterday met with officials of the World
Bank in Nigeria to map out strategies of ensuring proper utilization of loans
collected by the state government. Addressing Journalists yesterday after the meeting,
the Senate Leader, Senator Ahmed Lawan, APC, Yobe North who explained that move
by the upper chamber was in line with the need for fiscal discipline in public
spending, especially on monies borrowed by the affected government in the form
of loans to facilitate development, said that it would help prevent
backwardness and burdensome debts in the states. The Senate leader said: ” The
national assembly participates in a limited way in grantng states loans from
international agencies including the wold bank. Normally, the federal
government guarantees certain loans to states and therefore the national
assembly scrutinises the programmes and projects that are lined for utilisation
of those loans and this is our role. “In ensuring proper utilization of such
loans by respective States government, we have met with world bank officials.We
have given our honest advice to them on how to bring about fiscal discipline by
states goverment on such loans. “One of which is to ensure that state Houses of
Assembly Committees like that of appropriations public accouts committee and
the one on finance are given some kind of support by the world bank to ensure
that they have the capacity to scrutinise and oversight the utilisation of such
funds. ” Also, the office of the auditor general for every state should be
enhanced and the capacity of such staff of the offices of the auditor general
must be better so that they write very credible and deep reports of such
utilisation of funds and of course those who will be implimenting the projects,
those who will be spending the money in the offices of the commissioners of
finance, budget and planning and so on should also be supported and reformed”.
Senator Lawan who noted that the deliberations were very fruitful and strategic
in preventing reckless spending of such funds by state governors, said however
that that debt profile of States that had collected such loans were not
discussed at the meeting as to know whether any of them had surpassed its
financial capability for such loans for now. The Senate leader said that Senate
and by extension, the National Assembly will resume unfailingly next week
Tuesday.
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