How NOSDRA boss, Musa Idris goofed, unable to explain budget performance before Senate Committee

The Director General of the National Oil Spill, Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) Musa Idris at the Senate Committee goofed as he was unable to answer questions bothering on how funds appropriate for the agency was spent. 

Bereft of what to say when the Committee Chairman, Senator Hassan Mohammed, and his Vice,  Ibrahim Danbaba asked, the lawmakers threatened  to sanction the agency, if the DG was not able to account for the 2019 budget of the agency. 

The Director General of NOSDRA appeared before the Senate Committee with some management staff of the agency. 

Senator Mohammed further remarked:  “It is suspicious that a whole Director-General was ill-prepared and incompetent to defend how the budget of the agency under his watch was expended. 
“Some agencies are only interested in appearing before us to approve budget.   It is worrisome and disappointing that they could neither defend their yearly budget nor their yearly expenditures. 

“I am so disappointed in you DG, you think we are here to play, we are here for a serious business because all of you elected us to represent you here, so, when you come here you must be very serious because that is what is require of you here.

“I am so embarrassed because after you presented a paper to us and after a short while you said it was not the real one. DG I will better give you more time to go and prepare well and return back here,” he said.

In the same vein, Senator Ibrahim Danbaba expressed disappointment that despite the NOSDRA DG claim that the budget presentation of the agency was jointly prepared by the Director of Finance, Procurement and Administration, yet the paper was as poor as never prepared by the trio, a situation he advised them to step up their job or find alternative.

Danbaba tutored the trio on how to prepare a financial report for budget defence when he said, they should focus on the appropriation, money received and expenditure year by year starting from 2017 till date.

What baffled the lawmakers mostly was the fact that the DG and his team could not differentiate between 2017, 2018 and 2019 budget documents.

He said “I don’t know who prepared this document, Mr. Director General you need competent people to assist you.”

Meanwhile,  the DG apologized to the Committee for the errors in the documents, and pledged that they were going to go back and correct their errors and separate it by the years.

“Mr. Chairman I’m very sorry for these mistakes, we are going to look at it on yearly basis, and we want Thursday next week to be able to reconcile our records”,  he pleaded.