Members of the House of Representatives have moved a motion to review the National Orientation Agency (NOA)’s budget to enable the agency to improve citizens’ orientation, marking the first step towards increasing the NOA’s budget.
This is despite inserting a line item for a project outside the agency’s mandate in the 2024 budget — N54,866,711 for solar streetlights in Ado-Ekiti/Irepodun Ifelodun Federal Constituency of Ekiti.
While addressing lawmakers on the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Adewale Hameed, the House of Representatives member representing Agege Federal Constituency, Lagos State, moved a motion on the need to review the agency’s budgetary allocation.
The honourable cited the agency’s inadequate funding as the basis for this review.
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“The House is concerned that the existing funding provided for the agency is grossly inadequate to meet the extensive responsibilities of the agency and its offices across the nation,” said Hameed.
“We are concerned that given the prevailing trend of youth restiveness and social vices in the nation, there is definitely an urgent need to implement measures for effective re-orientation of citizens to curb vices, re-orient the people and encourage growth within our society.”
Despite being established to foster national unity by engaging citizens with information and public education, N54,866,711 was allocated to the agency for providing solar streetlights, which is outside its jurisdiction, in Ado-Ekiti.
Project line items under the National Orientation Agency in the 2024 budget.
Eleven line items were listed as projects under the agency in the 2024 budget.
FIJ discovered that the insertion of solar streetlights provision had the highest allocated amount on the list of projects under the agency in the 2024 budget.
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A thorough look at the line items under the Federal Ministry of Information and National Agency, the parent ministry of the NOA, reveals a similar picture.
Several projects outside the ministry’s role of information dissemination, education and orientation were inserted in the 2024 budget as project line items.
Some insertions under the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation in the 2024 budget. Source: BudgIT
For instance, N50,000,000 was allocated in the budget for the rehabilitation of the old Bauchi Central Mosque, Emirs Palace,Bauchi LGA, Bauchi, under the Federal Ministry of Information and National Agency. Another such insertion was an allocation of N400,000,000 for the construction and rehabilitation of roads in Enugu East Senatorial District.
FIJ has reported extensively on the numerous insertions made into the 2024 budget.
In August, FIJ reported that 40% of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA)’s N11.87 billion budget allocation went to lawmakers’ constituency projects, despite the expiration of national satellites.
FIJ has also reported that some agencies have begun making payments for projects inserted into the budget that do not fall within their jurisdiction. An example is the Federal College of Freshwater Fisheries Technology in New Bussa, which spent almost a billion naira to provide tricycles, security vehicles in Lagos and Ogun communities and other projects outside its mandate.
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