The House of Representatives committee on National Population has came down hard on the National Population Commission (NPC), for spending about N1.9 billion in organising a national summit, describing its explanations as shallow.
According to members of the committee, the report brought before it by the commission was not detailed therefore, therefore they demanded that the commission give a break down of how it spent N1.9 billion on the said event.
Other areas the Commmitte questioned the commission was how it spent N 118 million on designing a website , over five billion naira for mock census, and N23 million for welfare packages, as well as who benefitted fro the packages.
“We would like to know what type of welfare and who are the recipients of this N23 million”, a member of the panel from Osun State, Taofeek Ajilesorohad queried during a budget defence session with NPC on Wednesday.
In her explanation, Director of census in the Commission, Evelyn Olanipekun, stated that out of the N1.9 billion , over N129 million was expended on a one day summit organised at the presidential villa while N1.2 billion was used to organize other summits in the 36 states of the federation.
Also responding to the questions raised by the committee, a Federal commissioner (NPC), Bala Banye, who represented the chairman of the commission, Nasir Kwarra, explained that though the commission had submitted a detailed report to the committee on how the monies were spent so he would not be able to answer some questions concerning the funds verbally.
“We have furnished the committee with a detailed report of the monies that were spent so I will not be able to give a verbal answer to your questions”, he said, adding on the N1.2 billion spent by 36 States for the summit, some states were yet to conduct theirs.
