Northern lawmakers have put the losses resulting from Boko Haram attacks in the North-East at over N100bn and claimed that the amount was needed to rebuild the zone.
A member of the House of Representatives from Borno State, Mr. Abdulrahman Abba-Terrab, who moved a motion on the cost of the attacks on Wednesday, said the sect caused “immeasurable destruction of lives, property, and public infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, worship centres and market places.”
Abba-Terab led the debate on the floor against the backdrop of the N2bn the Federal Government earmarked for the rebuilding of the North-East this year.
For a start, he suggested that the N2bn should be increased to N12bn in the 2014 budget.
He added, “Some of the funds provided for future purposes under the capital supplementation head of the 2014 budget do not compare in priority when the country is losing one-sixth of its contribution to unimaginable magnitude of destruction.”
One of his prayers endorsed by the House was that the Committee on Appropriation should review the N2bn upward to N12bn as the Federal Government’s support for the North-East.
The motion was unanimously adopted.
Meanwhile, the House also gave 24 hours to its committees yet to defend the 2014 budget estimates before the Committee on Appropriation to do so.
Failing to do so by Thursday (today), the House said it would be forced to adopt the executive proposals for the Ministries, Departments and Agencies they supervised.
A letter the Chairman of the committee, Mr. John Enoh, wrote to the Speaker, Mr. Aminu Tambuwal, named over 20 defaulting committees.
Among affected committees are Petroleum Resources (Upstream); on Petroleum Resources (Downstream); Defence; and Police Affairs; Power; Banking/Currency; Niger Delta; Works and Committee on Water Resources.
The Committee on Appropriation is responsible for collating all the recommendations of other committees on the budget proposals before fine-tuning the figures for presentation to the House.
Each of the other committees is required to go before the Committee on Appropriation to defend their proposals.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Government on Wednesday offered to support Nigeria in the training of the military on anti-terrorism tactics.
The Canadian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr. Perry Calderwood, who made the pledge in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, said the training would help in tackling the current wave of insurgency being perpetrated by the Boko Haram Islamic sect in the northern part of the country.
Calderwood, who sympathised with Nigeria on the activities of the terrorist group, said his government was investigating the techniques being used by the group and would share the outcome with the Nigerian security operatives.
He said, “We are in solidarity with the Nigerian Government on the fight against terrorism. We are already investigating the techniques to track the insurgents and we would assist the security forces to combat the threat.”
The High Commissioner said he was in Calabar to unveil projects executed by his home country.
He added that over $20m had been expended on various projects in Nigeria.
Source: Punch
