Parliament

Reps to Minister: Quit if you aren’t ready for job

The House of Representatives on Tuesday asked the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Hajiya Sadiya Farouk to quit as minister if she was not ready for the job.

This followed her incessant failure to appear before various Committees of the House to defend the ministry’s 2023 budget proposal.

Rep. Muktar Betara, Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation said this during an investigative hearing on alleged budget insertion of N206 billion in the 2023 budget of the ministry in Abuja.

The N206,242,395,000 is for the National Social Safety Nets Project, which is domiciled in the ministry.

The World Bank is the funding sources for the project.

A visibly angry chairman of the committee had queried why the Minister was not present to defend the insertion, adding that if she was not ready for the job she should quit.

“Most times the committee calls the minister, she refuses to come. If she is not ready for the job, she should quit,” Betara said.

Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Dr Nasir Gwarzo, said the minister directed him to represent her.

“The minister said she did not understand the budget code, it was the media that reported the error as padding.

“We did not go to the media refuting the work the committee or the Ministry of Finance have done, but we wrote for clarification which was given.

“The amount of money in question was a counterpart funding that was given by the World Bank, if it was done without appropriation, Nigerian would not have known what was borrowed,” he said.

The Star