Business
THE Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has denied the speculations that it gave N300 million to the Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, as subvention. Henry Nkemadu, director, public affairs of the commission, said no agency of the federal government gives subvention to another agency.
Nkemadu noted in a statement that by the extant laws of the government, every agency makes its budget and gets approval for appropriation from the National Assembly. According to him, such budgets are spent in line with the appropriation of the National Assembly.
“Contrary to wide speculation by an online publication that the NCC gave N300 million to NITDA, we state unequivocally that this information is mere falsehood. We cannot create a provision in our budget for another agency to implement. Subventions to all agencies are done by the federal government with resources domiciled in the Consolidated Revenue Fund, CRF. Even salaries to ministries, departments and agencies, MDA, come from there,” he said.
He explained that NITDA as an agency of government also draws its budget and spends the same to execute its own programmes as it deems fit. He said since the advent of the new administration, Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy, 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.
He noted that 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, NGF, on issues of Right of Way, RoW, for expanding the telecommunications infrastructure and declaring telecommunications infrastructure as Critical National Infrastructure, CNI.
“We did not receive any directive from the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, on funding any activity of NITDA and no approval was given in that regard. Whoever thinks so simply threw caution to the wind by rolling up speculative information that we know nothing about let alone implement.
“We have not done 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,” he said.
– Mar. 30, 2020 @ 14:59 GMT |
Tags: We didn’t give N300m as subventions to NITDA – NCC
