Senate tackles Lai Mohammed over N250m project

The Senate on Tuesday tackled the Minister of information, Lai Mohammed, over a controversial project fully funded by the Ministry of Finance for execution by his Ministry in the 2020 fiscal year.

The project was tagged ERPG 10145116, and was listed as ‘completion of NTA Gashua sub-station ongoing’.

The project had its allocation of N250m fully released to the Ministry.

The Minister led other top officials of his Ministry to the Senate on Tuesday o defend their 2021 budget estimates.

Chairman, Senate Committee on information, Abdullahi Sankara, maintained that the Minister has a lot of explanations to make over the project.

He said that it was 100 per cent release of funds without any work commensurate to the full releases done on sight.

The controversy over the project started when the Minister explained that the project was sponsored by a lawmaker as a constituency project and inserted the same into his Ministry’s 2020 budget.

Senators present at the panel took exception to Mohammed’s explanation.

The lawmakers took turns to query the Minister over the project, insisting that it was not a constituency project.