The Nigerian Senate Committee on Information and National Orientation, Tuesday asked the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed to explain how the ministry expended N19 million on international travel during the COVID-19 lockdown.
This was even as the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Danladi Sankara (Jigawa North-West), called on the Federal Government to increase the annual budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Information and Culture in view of its numerous critical schedules.
Senator representing Imo East, Ezennwa Onyewuchi, had during the ministry’s budget defence raised questions on how N19 million was expended from the N43 million meant for international travels whereas the period coincided with the COVID-19 lockdown.
“Let me take you on this 2020 overhead. You have here on local travels and transport appropriated is N30 million you expended N23 million on local transport you received N96million as appropriated as released and you expended N90 million.
“On International travels and transport you had N43 million and you expended N19million.
“So, I am wondering this period of lockdown where nobody was able to go to any country during the 2020 appropriation, how were you able to embark on international travels and you expended N19 million.
“So we need to look at that critically and you should also tell us here in parliament how you were able to do that.
“Most part of the year we had travel restrictions. I am sure you will remember you did a lot of enlightenment programmes on this and I am sure you will remember that most of us were prevented from moving into other states.
“So I don’t know how you also had the luxury of spending the entire amount that was appropriated on those travels so those are the information we need to get from your expenditure,” Onyewuchi queried.
The Minister in his response said the international travels were undertaken before the COVID-19 lockdown.
“You will notice that N43 million was budgeted but less than 40 per cent was spent precisely because of the COVID-19 and before then remember that we had travelled to attend several international summits starting UNWTO conference, UNESCO in Spain and in the UK. We also did advocacy in the UK at the same time. These were all before the lockdown.
“I think our last trip was actually in Addis Ababa when we accompanied the President to the AU summit and that was about March 2020 before the lockdown.
The lockdown came at the end of March. So whatever we spent here was before the lockdown.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Committee, Sankara, called for more budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Information and Culture.
