The Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, has expressed deep frustration over the persistent poor funding of his ministry, stating that the chronic financial constraints have stifled its ability to meet its mandate effectively.
Tijani expressed this dissatisfaction Wednesday while defending the ministry’s budget before the Joint Committee on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Cybersecurity, chaired by Sen. Shuaib Afolabi Salisu (APC, Ogun Central) and Rep. Adedeji Stanley Olajide (PDP, Oyo).
He said: “This is a ministry that is extremely underfunded, and this is our collective responsibility, not just as a ministry, but also as a committee responsible for oversight of the work that we do.”
The minister noted that the ministry has struggled to achieve its goals with the current funding structure, often relying on external sources to supplement its operations. Key activities, such as international engagements to secure opportunities for the sector, have largely been financed through non-governmental means due to insufficient allocations.
He said: “This ministry is unable to deliver its mandate, if we continue to fund it in the way it is funded. In fact, to achieve what we’ve achieved so far, we’ve had to look for money outside of the government to get work done. A lot of the international trips that we’ve made to secure opportunities for this sector and the nation were funded from outside of government funds. It is extremely important that we put emphasis on the fact that this is a ministry that is poorly funded.
“So the budget we’re about to discuss today is actually not a significant worth of the time of all of us in this room, because these budgets cannot deliver on the mandate that we should be working for our nation.”