Nigerian Power transmission firm budgets zero naira for staff salary, keeps mum to enquiry on holes in its N105bn budget
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has budgeted Zero Naira for Personnel, Overhead and Recurrent Expenditure in its 2022 appropriations, Platforms Africa has uncovered, showing lack of trasparency in the N105 billion 2022 budget of the firm.
Platforms Africa, which uncovered this, reported that the company was also not transparent on spending for its Personnel, Overhead and Recurrent Expenditure in the N5.3billion budget of 2021. It recorded zero naira for the items in the two budgets.
President Muhammadu Buhari, had in October 2021, presented the 2022 Federal Government Budget Proposal at the joint session of the National Assembly in Abuja.
The proposed Revenue and Expenditure budgets for 2022 are N10.13 trillion and N16.39 trillion, respectively, resulting in N6.26 trillion fiscal deficit.
A Platforms Africa review of the TCN budget showed that there is no figure for Personnel, Overhead and Recurrent Expenditure in its almost N105 billion budget.
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Specifically, zero was allocated for the three items above.
Curiously, the 2021 budget showed the same trend as total allocation was N5.3 billion but no amount was allocated for Personnel, Overhead and Recurrent Expenditure.
A message sent to Ndidi Mbah, General Manager in charge of Public Affairs on November 29th, 2021 was not acknowledged.
However, when our correspondent called her on Thursday, she promised to get back with answers.
Again, our correspondent called her on Friday to remind her of her promise to respond.
“Can you just please send me a text so I can reply you?”, she said.
She was yet to respond as at press time.
Recently, a report ranked government’s ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) on matters of transparency and integrity low.
The index notes that the institutions assessed with figures from 0-44 standing for “very poor,” 45-49 as poor; 50-59 as good; 60-69 as very good and 70-100 as excellent.
However, out of the 475 that were ranked, none scored up to 40 per cent, the result showed.
