Reps walk out minister over shouting match

Okon

Minister for Science and Technology, Professor Ita Okon Bassey-Ewa was yesterday walked out by the House of Representatives committee on Science and Technology at the 2013 budget defense.

During the budget defense, the Minister engaged his supervising Committee of the House in a shouting match when the members asked him to give the actual budget performance of his ministry.

The Minister, instead of providing the answers to the questions raised over the percentage of releases so far made by the minister of finance, wondered why he should be asked such a question in the manner it was posed.

The committee, chaired by Hon Abiodun Akinlade, had asked the Minister to convert the ministry's 2012 budget performance into percentage instead providing it on item by item basis. Bassey-Ewa who made efforts to convert same to percentage could however not do so.

The Chairman pointed out that the Minister had never taken the committee seriously just as he recollected that Bassey-Ewa had failed to provide the percentage performance of his ministry when the committee went to his office for oversight functions sometimes ago.

In his response, the minister shouted "We are prepared; we are prepared. You can see that I have been trying to compute the percentage."

When cautioned by the Chairman that he should realize that he was appearing before a committee which is an extension of the House, the minister replied that he was first shouted at by a lawmaker.

Following his inability to answer queries from the committee, Akinlade, after consultations with his colleagues , ordered Bassey-Ewa to leave and get himself adequately prepared to appear before the committee at another date.

After the Minister had been ordered to leave the venue of the meeting, and the minister walked out angrily, the Ministry's Permanent Secretary, Rabi Shuaibu Jimeta, apologized, on personal grounds, to the lawmakers and promised to put all figures together in subsequent engagement with the committee.

The committee had earlier queried the Minister on why he has refused to recommend the appointment of a substantive Director General for the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) when the Acting DG of the agency, Engnr. Mohammed Haruna, had stayed in acting capacity for more than the regulatory six months.

The Minister agreed that Haruna has stayed for about eight months in acting capacity as the DG of the agency but told the lawmakers that the process for the appointment of a substantive DG for NASENI had been completed only for ratification by the President.

Meanwhile, the committee chairman in his opening remarks had lamented that the government has relegated the development of science and technology to the background by not including the sector in his six priority areas in the 2013 budget.

He said "The President in his Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) earmarked six ministries as priority areas and unfortunately the Ministry of Science and Technology is not there.

No country has ever enjoyed global attention without developing its Science and Technology potentials. It would be difficult to move this country forward without developing our technology. "