The Senate Committee on Army yesterday directed its secretariat to summon the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed; the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru and the Director General of the Budget Office, Mr. Ben Akabueze to appear before the committee on Tuesday.

The Ministry of Finance told the committee yesterday that the Federal Government spent N198.84 billion to fight terrorism from 2019 till date.

The Permanent Secretary, Special Duties, in the finance ministry, Aliyu Shinkafi, said all the funds appropriated for the war against insurgency had been released to the military authorities.

The Permanent Secretary told the committee that N75billion was appropriated and released in 2019, adding that N7billion was released in 2019.

Shinkafi said N2.5billion was released in 2019 and tagged as ‘administration.’

The Permanent Secretary also told the senators that N75billion was appropriated in 2020 but that N74.99billion was released.

He said,

In the current year, N100billion was appropriated and we have released N19.4billion for the first quarter.

Just yesterday (Wednesday), we released N19.95billion for the second quarter,

he added.

Ndume however, brought out a letter from the Chief of Defence Staff where he said the military authorities complained that they had shortfall of N50billion as far as releases from the Finance Ministry was concerned.

Ndume expressed dissatisfaction with the non- appearance of the minister at the meeting.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.