The House of Representatives has denied insinuations that it indicted Princess Orelope-Adejoke Adefulire, the senior special assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals over alleged padding of allocations to her office in the 2020 budget.
Rotimi Agunsoye, Chairman, House Committee Sustainable Development Goals said this in a statement on Saturday in reaction to a report on the issue in a national newspaper that the lawmakers had asked Ministry of Finance to stop release of allocation to the SDGs office over the issue.
“In setting the records straight, the House Committee on SDGs hereby state that a correspondence was sent to the Finance Ministry in respect the subject matter, upon which clarification was sought from the SDGs office without any indictment on the person or the office of the SSA-SDGs, indicating misappropriation of the 2020 budgetary allocation of her office,” Agunsoye said.
The lawmaker further explained that the House Committee on SDGs got records from the OSSAP-SDGs and Appropriation committee which shows the said additional 33 billion was not appropriated for SDGs office among provisions of the 2020 budget earlier assented to by the President.
But he noted that the prevalence of Covid-19 distorted implementation of entire 2020 budget.
“The legislature is determined to ensure adequate oversight of all appropriated for the implementation of SDGs programmes in all ministries and agencies of government as well captured, as soon as we get adequate correspondence from the House appropriation committee to further ascertain fund release in order to guide our oversight activities.
“Hence, the recent official correspondence from both Senate and House SDGs committees to the finance ministry to release the budget provisions of OSSAP-SDGs so as to enable our committee to oversight accordingly.
“This clarification became imperative to avoid any misrepresentation of the earlier correspondence between the National Assembly Committees on SDGs and Finance Ministry as any financial indictment on the person and office of the OSSAP-SDGs,” Agunsoye added.