Imported User:
Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government have now resorted to disguising recurrent expenditure as capital expenditures in the bid to jack-up their budgetary allocations.
LEADERSHIP checks revealed there were incredible requests for computers, software, printers and photocopying machines across all MDAs even as previous budgets also showed same massive demand.
Overall, no less than N6billion was provided for purchase of computers and software acquisition in the 2012 budget besides the N4.58 billion provided for the same purpose in 2011 and with the same MDAs having huge allocations in both years.
For instance, Ministry of Works had recurring demand for computer and software with the provision of N1.8 billion and N95.7 million for each in 2011 and 2012 budgets respectively, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also provided N200.8 million and N207.8 million for acquisition of computer and software in 2011 and 2012 budgets.
This is besides the N3.68 billion also allocated for office stationeries and computer consumables budgeted under recurrent expenditures in the 2012 budget.
Reacting to the spurious demand for computer and software by MDAs, Lead Director, Centre for Social Justice, Mr Eze Onyekpere, said the demand was over- bloated and unnecessarily shot up the cost of governance.
He described it as a ploy by the MDAs to concentrate spending on administrative capital instead of developmental capital
Another high and recurring provision for computer and software was by the Federal Ministry of Land and Housing with a total of N551.4 million and N727.8 million provided for them in the 2011 and 2012 budgets.
Also, Federal Ministry of Interior’s allocation for computers was N31.5 million in 2010, N66.2 million in 2011 and N90.4 million in the 2012 budget; Ministry of Defence (Main MOD) had N27 million, N100.4 million and N70.8 million provisioned for computer hardware and software in 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively.
