By Stella Odueme-Omona
Snr, Correspondent, Abuja
Nigeria’s Ministry of Defence is broke. This is due to limited budgetary allocation as well as arbitrary reduction of proposed budgetary appropriation by the Budget Office of the Federation, leaving the ministry with liabilities and unpaid debts.
The ministry is therefore seeking a review of its budget in view of its importance and strategic role by increasing its capital and overhead allocations.
The Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Aliyu Ismaila, made the disclosure on Tuesday when the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF), Bukar Goni Aji and the Peer Review Team of Permanent Secretaries visited the ministry
in Abuja on assessment of the level of implementation of its budget.
He explained that over N19 billion was approved for the ministry in the 2013 appropriation and that only about N13 billion has been released so far.
He noted that the ministry is burdened with over N194 million unpaid hotel bills, N14 million outstanding burial and death expenses and over N108 million outstanding repatriation allowance.
In his remark, Aji said that the Peer Review was to understand the feeling of staff through the union headship as well as an assessment of the performance of permanent secretaries.
The of Service of the Federation said that the Federal Government was working to complete the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) exercise and capture all MDAs by February 2013.
According to him, the issue of ghost workers would be resolved with the implementation of the IPPIS, which he said was expected to resolve delays in salaries payment.
