2021: Reps raise issues with oral health agency’s budget

The House of Representatives Committee on Healthcare Services, has queried the manner of fund allocations to some projects of the Inter-country Centre for Oral Health (ICOH) Africa in its 2021 budget.

The concerns came when Director General of the Centre, Dr. Sani Balarabe made presentation during a budget defence meeting with the committee on Tuesday,  disclosing the allocation of two million naira each to some ongoing projects such as road network at the permanent site of the organisation, installation of electricity transformer and underground cables, among others.

Members of the committee were shocked as to them, such an amount (two million naira) could barely do anything significant on each of the projects to which  it was assigned, and therefore observed that rather than have multiple projects with such paltry budgets, the agency should prioritise in order of what it needed most.

The committee also raised issue with an additional expenditure proposal amounting to about N410 million, when the agency’s internally generated revenue (IGR) had remained about N10 million over the years.

The DG had earlier told the committee that the agency, with support from international donors was conceded to Nigeria after the Federal Government agreed to pay its staff salaries and provide other operational supports, lamenting however that it has continued to maintain an overhead cost of N12 million since 2017, even after a significant increase in its staff strength.

He also told the panel that the centre was not a revenue generating agency, though it created an oral healthcare clinic, from which the little it was generating came from, urging the support of the committee for it to have an office in Abuja, as that would help it more in its IGR.

Concluding on the position of the committee, Hon. Samuel Adejare who presided over the session told the DG that the panel would in the shortest possible time visit the centre for on-the-spot assessment of things before it consider its budget. “Mr DG, we are going to visit the centre on oversight”, he said while asking to wait around so that they could agree on a date.

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