Budget: Lai Mohammed Seeks Increased Allocation To Ministry  

Minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed yesterday noted that funds allocated to the ministry in the proposed 2023 budget was grossly inadequate.

The minister who appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Information, National Orientation, Ethics and Values, said the ministry needed adequate funding to be able to discharge its duties effectively especially as it concerns the general election and the national population census in 2023.

According to him, the Ministry of Information needed adequate funding to be able to effectively showcase the achievements of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration as the tenure winds down; counter the rising menace of fake news, hate speech and misinformation which he said, are threatening the existence of the country.

“I fully understand the economic challenges the country is facing but I do not agree that the Ministry of Information and Culture should have less, actually it should have more.

“This is because it is in times of challenges and hardship that you need your Ministry of Information not just to chronicle despite lack of funds but to combat fake news, disinformation, hate speech which today has attained a height that is threatening our very existence as a nation.

“While I admit that our revenue is dwindling, there is no better time to have more money for the Ministry of Information than now. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know where to start. We don’t know how to survive. If you expect so much from us, then, equip us with adequate funding”, he said.

He lamented that the capital expenditure of the ministry was slashed from N1 billion allocated to it in the 2022 fiscal year to N435 million in 2023 fiscal year which he described as a very critical year for the ministry.

Mohammed further explained that the capital allocations of most of the parastatals under his ministry were slashed. The minister appealed to the committee to jerk up the 2023 capital budget allocation of the ministry to enable it handle the enormous tasks it needs to undertake.

The chairman of the committee, Odebunmi Olusegun, also decried the low capital allocation to the ministry, adding that the information ministry needed to be empowered to carry out its functions effectively.

He said the budget of the information ministry in some states of the federation are far more than what the “whole country is proposing for the Federal Ministry of Information despite the very high responsibilities attached therein.”

Other members of the committee in their separate remarks described the capital allocations to the Information Ministry as grossly inadequate and “totally unacceptable.”