By Chibuike Nwabuko
Abuja (Sundiata Post) – Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has denied an online publication that it gave N300 million to Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
A statement by NCC Management signed by Director, Public Affairs, Dr. Henry Nkemadu, said “no agency of the federal government gives subvention to another agency by extant laws of the government, every agency makes its budget and gets approval for appropriation from the National Assembly and such budgets are spent according to the appropriation of the National Assembly.”
He added that the NCC budget doesn’t contain any allocation for subvention to a sister’ agency saying, “we cannot create a provision in our budget for another agency to implement.”
Nkemadu continued, “Subventions to all agencies are done by the Federal government with resources domiciled in the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF). Even salaries to Ministries Department and Agencies (MDA) come from there.”
He said, NITDA as an agency of government also draws its budget and spends same to execute their own programmes as they deem fit.
Since the advent of the new administration, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami has always encouraged a working relationship and close synergy between all the parastatals under the purview of the Ministry and not cross-funding of any of the parastatals.
According to him, the Minister has also facilitated support at the highest levels of government to programmes and activities of the Commission especially in facilitating meetings with the Nigeria Governors Forum on issues of Right of Way for expanding the telecommunications infrastructure and declaring telecommunications infrastructure as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI).
Nkemadu therefore posited that “we did not receive any directive from the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, on funding any activity of NITDA and no approval was given in that regard.”
He said the NCC had not entered into any partnership with NITDA “to warrant any subvention for capacity building let alone implementing one. So the aspect of creating a budget for subvention is not true.” the statement added.