The Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, has called for an amendment of the Public Procurement Act to expedite the process of procurement of projects by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs)
Maku made the call in Abuja on Monday at the 2013 budget defence of the Ministry of Information and its parastatals before the Senate and House of Representatives Joint Committee on Information.
He said that the review of the law would facilitate quick conclusion of the procurement process for improved budget performance by the MDAs.
“The procurement law is in need of review. It is difficult for all MDAs doing new projects to conclude the process on time.
“If you look at the procurement law, you need to give about two months notice in adverts.
“If you cut down on the timeline for some of the provisions, you will still achieve the major objective of competitiveness, as well as value for money.‘’
Maku identified lack of sufficient funding as the major challenge affecting the effective discharge of the ministry’s mandate.
According to him, several programmes targeted at boosting external publicity for the country were yet to take off due to lack of funds.
“We’ve not been able to conduct external publicity which is very important for the country because of limited resources.
“We haven’t been able to post information attaches to the major embassies as well as execute our mandate domestically, because we don’t have sufficient resource.‘’
Maku noted that the ministry and the agencies were committed to continue delivering on their core function of diligently informing the public.
He said the 2012 budget performance of the ministry in terms of capital expenditure was 33 per cent while the parastatals posted more than 80 per cent .
The ministry of information and all its parastatals presented a total budget proposal of N27.3 billion for 2013.
N18.4 billion was proposed for personnel cost, N3.3 billion for overhead cost while N5.4 is for capital expenditure
The minister listed some of the ministry’s priority in 2013 to include the implementation of the external publicity campaign and documentaries to showcase government’s activities in key sectors.
He pledged the preparedness of the ministry to put up a better budget implementation next year if the budget was passed early.
A member of the committee, Sen. Smart Adeyemi, canvassed for more budgetary allocation to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in view of the enormous work it was doing in information dissemination.
“The amount proposed for NAN is too small compared to the enormous work the agency is doing across the country and externally.
“There is need to give more funds to these agencies because they actually reach the public directly,’’ he said.
Adeyemi also advised the minister of information to allow journalists to express their independent assessments to enable the `Good Governance Tour’ enjoy the goodwill of Nigerians.
The minister should talk less. Let the journalists do the assessment, so that people would not say that the minister was covering up the government.
The committee directed the NAN, NTA and FRCN to appear before it on a yet to be announced date for continuation of their budget defence.
Agencies that attended the budget defence are the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), Voice of Nigeria (VON) and National Broadcasting Commission (NBC)
Others are the Nigeria Press Council (NPC) Nigeria Film Corporation (NFC) and the Nigeria Films and Video Censors Board.
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