The House Committee on FCT Judiciary earlier today could not proceed with the budget session of FCT Judiciary due to non availability of required documents to access the 2020 budget performance.
As a result, the National Judiciary Commission (NJC), High Court, Maitama and FCT Magistrate Court, who were at the session were unable to make their budget presentation.
According to the Honourable Ifeanyi Chudy Momah-led Committee Committee, the standard procedure is for necessary budget documents to be made available to the secretariat of the Committee much earlier than the days for budget session, to enable members have enough time to properly scrutinize the documents.
The affected agencies however stated that copies of the documents in question were forwarded to the NJC, where they were expected to be transmitted to the Committee. “That was the usual tradition”, they said.
The Committee however responded saying that there is no way it could carefully examine the 2020 funds utilisation of the agencies as well as examine their 2021 projections without documents to assess the budget performance of 2020 and the 2021 budget proposal.
Committee wondered how it could carefully examine the 2020 funds utilisation of the agencies as well as examine their 2021 projections if budget performance of 2020 and the 2021 budget proposal were not available to the members.
Consequently, the Deputy Chairman of the Committee, Rep. Omowumi Olubunmi Ogunlola moved a motion for the Committee to go into an executive session.