Members of the House of Representatives, Committee on Works were on Thursday angry on the poor state of Nigerian roads, and attributed it to poor budget implementation on the part of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA).
The committee had disallowed the agency from presenting its 2021 budget over lack of execution of the 2020 budget. Members of the committee were divided on the decision to allow the presentation of the 2021 budget resulting in a prolonged argument amongst them. At the end of the argument the Managing Director of the Agency, Nurudeen Rafindadi and his Management team were asked to leave the session as members deliberated amongst themselves on salient issues.
Members upon resuming the open session said the agency has been irresponsible and unresponsive to its core mandate, as they said the Managing Director had been called before now to alert him on the sorry state of some roads and he refused to pick their calls. The committee also accused FERMA of imputing strange items regarding COVID-19 palliatives were seen in the FERMA budget making members wonder what those have to do with road maintenance.
Members added that the relevant budget documents were submitted in the morning, a few hours to the sitting, depriving members of the opportunity to review the budget of the agency. After much deliberation the FERMA boss and his team were called in but the lawmakers agreed that the budget hearing be moved to next week to allow for a thorough consideration.
