By Michael Agbaji
The Senate Ad-hoc committee on uneven disbursement of loans, grants, interventions in the six-geopolitical regions by Nigeria’s Development banks on Monday has given the last warning to management of Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) to appear Thursday Unfairly or face arrest.
The Chairman of the committee, Senator Sani Musa (Niger East, APC) gave the warning when the minister of state for Industry, Trade and Investment, Ambassador Mariam Katagum appeared before the committee at the National Assembly in Abuja.
According to him,”even if the Director has been suspended NIRSAL micro finance is a government Institution which have top management Staff and they must come and face the committee over allegation of uneven disbursement of loans, grants, interventions among others” he says”
He maintained that the absence of NIRSAL following repeated invitation was worrisome, whether the Managing Director is there or not the management of the agency must appear before the committee on Thursday.
The member of the committee Senator Matthew Urhoghide (Edo south PDP) affirmed the position of the Chairman” say the committee will not hesitate to invoke all constitutional provisions to compel any agencies, including NIRSAL to appear, through the instrument of office of the Inspector General of Police.
He further stated that It became important to check all interventions, it will be totally out of place if NIRSAL is not here” Urhoghide said.
Senator Musa further said “I think the committee is well guided on the reason why NIRSAL management must appear.
“We should write to NIRSAL to appear on Thursday, failure to do so we shall not hesitate to invoke the constitution” he said.
According to the Chairman of the committee, “we have heard what is going on in NIRSAL, the Managing Director has been suspended”.
Consequently, he added “I put it that NIRSAL management, NIRSAL microfinance should appear on Thursday at 11 am”.
Meanwhile, Senator Ayo Akinyelure (Ondo Central, PDP) has tasked the Minister of state on the disbursement of survival funds, saying people who applied for a grant of N3.2million for small scale enterprises, however ended up with three hundred thousand naira and two hundred of fifty naira for Ondo and Oyo states respectively.
“We were told at the point of disbursement the state government changed the name of the programme from NCares to Ondo cares and Oyo cares.
“We were told the state government hijacked and reduced the amount to N300,000 and 250,000 for Ondo and Oyo respectively and reduced the number of beneficiaries” Akinyelure said.
While responding the Executive Director of Bank of Industry, Shekarau Omar opined that the NCares was a world bank intervention grant, saying “we will get the details and come back. It is better for me to go back and get the details and come back within the week” he said.
The Minister in her submission over the survival funds said at the inception of the disbursement, she wrote to state governments to appoint focal persons, stressing that “we approached the Senate”.
She added “from my record, we did carried the Senate along, the leadership of National Assembly at one point commended us under the survival find”.
Senator Musa, however noted that “from the data before us, it has shown that there was equitable distribution of survival loans, saying henceforth they should reach out to senators”.
He explained that what the committee is doing is like a fact finding, so that at the end they will be able to tell Nigerians how intervention funds were disbursed.
Senator Musa while concluding the session told the Minister “in our finding, should we need your attention, we shall not hesitate to invite you”.
