Senate Investigates NIOMCO Over Non-performance

The Senate has constituted an ad-hoc committee to investigate the Nigerian Iron Ore Mining Company (NIOMCO) Itakpe over non-performance, despite budget allocations and releases of funds since 2008.

The resolution to investigate the organisation followed a motion adopted by members of the Senate Committee on Finance at day 3 of the interactive session with MDAs on 2022-2023 MTEF and FSP.

The motion was moved by Sen Opeyemi Bamidele.

The ad-hoc committee has Sani Musa as Chairman, while members include Opeyemi Bamidele, James Manager, Michael Nnachi, and Sadik Suleiman.

The committee is to investigate the budget of the organisation which comprises capital recurrent and overhead from 2008 to date and is expected to turn in Its report in two weeks.

Earlier, the chairman of the Committee Sen.Solomon Adeola said the agency was a major source of wastage of government funds, following its moribund nature since 2008.

He said the agency had been inactive for 14 years despite allocations of funds for capital, recurrent, and overheads.

Adeola said N1.8 billion was released as capital fund, while N2.5 billion has been cumulatively released to the organisation as at July 2022.

Adeola said it was worrisome that funds for capital, recurrent and overhead have been released to the agency since 2004 with no performance to show.

He said there was no reason for the government to continue to fund an agency that has been out of operation since 2008.

“The organisation is deserted, and who are you paying salary, what project have you executed,” Adeola rhetorically asked.

Sen. Opeyemi Bamidela said: “This is an entirely fearful situation and we will fund our budget by borrowing.

“And we have an agency that is meant to be developing our steel sector and they have not done anything since 2008.”

Sen Jubril Isah accused the management of the agency of abandoning its mandate to some perceived social responsibility outside the mandate.

He urged the management to desist from further construction projects not covered by its mandate.

Responding, the sole administrator of NIOMCO Mr Augustus Nkechika said the agency was mandated to stop operation in 2008, following the planned concession of the organisation, which resulted in litigation.

He, however, revealed that efforts had been made to resolve the matter by the federal government.

He also revealed that the organisation has 700 staff on Its payroll, saying that IPPIS was responsible for the payment of staff salaries.