Following admission of an N80 billion extra budgetary spending by the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), the House of Representatives Special Committee on Public Accounts has threatened to sanction past managing directors of the authority from 1998 to date.
The committee said it will summon the past chief executives, including Arch. Aminu Dabo, who managed NPA during the period, to come and defend the “mess.”
A media report (not in Daily Trust) recently alleged that NPA had spent N180 billion unbudgeted funds.
But managing director of the authority, Mr Adebayo Sarumi refuted the allegation on Tuesday, when he appeared before the House Committee on Marine Transport. He said NPA never spent beyond what was budgeted.
Sarumi, however, made a u-turn yesterday while defe-nding audit queries before the House Public Accounts Committee, explaining that NPA overshot its budget by N80 billion from 1998 to 2003.
Apparently furious about the development, committee chairman, Oluwole Adeyemi, said the tendency was unconstitutional and must attract sanctions.
“All past managing directors of NPA will be brought before this committee to explain this mess,” he said.
Adeyemi further said that arrangements were being made to organise a public hearing where the past chief executives will be made to face the public.
Giving a breakdown of the escalated spending, Sarumi explained that in 1998, N7.3 billion was budgeted but the expenditure rose to N14 billion; in 1999 N8.2 billion was budgeted, while NPA spent N20.2 billion; and in 2000 the spending was N23.6 billion against N11.8 billion budget.
Others were N18.4 billion (budget) against N38.4 bill-ion (spending) for 2001; N29.3 billion (budget) against N44.9 billion (spending) for 2002; and N32.4 billion (bud-get) against N39.4 billion (spending) for 2003.
Sarumi also said that he has overshot this year’s bud-get by N4 billion.
Defending his organis-ation for embarking on what the legislators said was illegal, the managing director contended that based on the law establishing NPA, only the board and minister of transport had powers to app-rove budgets for the authority.
He said, however, that NPA was merely advised to come to the National Asse-mbly because of the lawm-akers’ oversight functions.
“Specifically we are not supposed to present our bu-dget to the National Asse-mbly, because we are more or less a commercial enterprise… our expenditure comes from our revenue and not from any where else,” he said.
Sarumi also said that over 60 percent of monies accr-uing to NPA were in dollars, and that the authority gets naira-denominated revenue from cargo delivery only.
But the lawmakers contended that only the National Assembly had powers of appropriation for gover-nment-owned organisations, wherever their revenue may come from.
