Hon. Speaker, House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole
For the third time on Thursday, the 2010 budget of the Nigeria Communications Commission suffered a setback as the House of Representatives rejected a conference report on it.
Incidentally, there are barely 64 days to the end of the year, but the commission‘s N69.3bn is yet to get approval in the House.
To stave off a rowdy session, the Speaker of the House, Mr. Dimeji Bankole, stepped the budget down and ordered an investigation into the controversies surrounding the document.
On July 28, the House had passed some provisions of the budget and forwarded a copy to the Senate for concurrence with the latter‘s version.
The Senate had earlier passed the budget.
The report of the conference committee of the Senate and the House was scheduled to be adopted on Thursday, but lawmakers kicked against it.
Some lawmakers protested the inclusion of some provisions the House did not approve in its own version before it was sent to the conference committee.
One of the controversial provisions is the N6.1bn budgeted for SIM card registration by the NCC.
The NCC had proposed to undertake the registration of existing SIM cards as part of efforts to contain the use of mobile telephones for criminal purposes.
Telecommunications service providers are to undertake the registration of new subscribers under an arrangement with the NCC.
But when the budget was debated by the House in July, lawmakers opposed the decision of the NCC to spend N6.1bn to register existing subscribers.
They argued that the global practice was that service providers were responsible for the registration of subscribers while the regulator defined the guidelines.
The House in a majority decision, deleted the N6.1bn from the budget.
The figure, however, found its way into the report sent to the House on Thursday.
Without the benefit of examining the report, lawmakers protested against what they said was a move to stampede them to ”adopt” the document.
The Chairman of the House Committee on Rules and Business, Mr. Ita Enang, tried unsuccessfully to convince his colleagues to adopt the report.
The Chairman of the Committee on NCC, Mr. Dave Salako, was also shouted down when he attempted to offer explanations.
Sensing trouble, Bankole quickly ordered the withdrawal of the report.
He directed that an investigation be conducted on the matter before the House would take a final decision on the budget.
Source:http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201010290585937
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