The joint committee on Appropriation and Finance of the House of Representatives have accused President Umaru Yar'Adua of selective implementation of the 2009 budget, despite having enough funds for full implementation.
In a four-page report, the committee said some of the agencies of government have not received their overhead releases while many projects included in the budget were not funded deliberately.
The committee was mandated by the House in May, to look into the implementation of the 2009 Appropriation Act between January and April and report back within two weeks.
The mandate was given the committee following a motion complaining that the President had not been faithful in the implementation of the budget.
However, Mr. Yar'Adua, in his response alleged that the lawmakers padded the budget.
Although the report of the joint committee, which was obtained by NEXT on Thursday, has since been submitted, the House is yet to debate it. It was jointly signed by the Appropriation Committee chairman, Ayo Adeseun and Finance Committee chairman, John Enoh.
It says, "Although releases were meant to cover the first two quarters of the year, i.e 50 percent of the annual allocation, despite assurances that the recurrent budget had been fully released as passed, some of the MDAs were not given their correct allocations. In fact, releases to MDAs varied between 19 percent-50 percent.
"Capital project implementation varied widely from the 2009 Appropriation Act" the Joint Committee said, adding, "although, there was no shortfall during the period under consideration, yet there was selective implementation of capital budget since many projects which were included in the Act were deliberately not funded."
"This runs contrary to the 2009 Appropriation Act.
In fact, we gathered that as a matter of policy, the capital budget is officially being funded at 70 percent level."
The committee said that there has been shortfall in the revenue because of the militancy in the Niger Delta region as well as the reduction in the country's OPEC quota.
"Militant activities in the Niger Delta region resulted in disruption of oil exploration which reduced the daily output from the targeted 2.292mbd to about 2.05mbd (an 8.944 percent reduction output).
"There was some reduction in Nigeria's OPEC quota during the first four months of the year." The committee, however, said that a total of ₦119.12 billion has been withdrawn from the Excess Crude Account to augment the shortfall in Federation Account and Federal Government's share of this, amounted to ₦51.79 billion (52.68percent).
It also said that the sales of government houses and other transfer totalled ₦127.37 billion.
According to the committee, government's actual revenue (expended fund) was ₦27.98 billion higher than the budgeted figures during the first four months of the year.
It added, "Given the above therefore, enough funds were available for full implementation of the budget as passed for the period under review i.e January to April, 2009." On how it made the discoveries, the joint committee said it solicited detailed information from the Finance Minister, Mansur Muhtar and his staff.
It said that the minister through the Director General of the Budget Office and the Accountant General of the Federation submitted some items, which include revenue accrued to the Federal Government during the four months, actual releases to MDAs and actual figures and percentage of budget implementation during the period.