Members of the Senate and House Committees on FERMA have lamented that the agency is poorly funded and advocated an increased annual budgetary allocation for it.
A statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday by the agency’s Director of Communications and Public Relations, Mrs Maryam M. Sanusi, quoted the Chairman, Senate Committee on FERMA, Sen. Hussaini Babangida Uba, speaking during a joint sitting of the Senate and House Committees on FERMA at the hearing of the presentation of the FERMA 2023 Performance/2024 Budget Defence.
Uba said FERMA could not meet up with the people’s expectation of making all roads motorabe and safe for users because the annual budgetary allocation to FERMA falls grossly below what the agency needs to carry out its mandate of maintaining federal roads across the nation.
He said the poor condition of federal roads across the country is unimaginable and calls for urgent attention to ameliorate the suffering of road users, and enjoined FERMA to invest more in stakeholders’ engagement and on publicity to enable its achievements, challenges and aspirations be heard and appreciated by the general public.
Uba also encouraged FERMA to effectively communicate its progress and challenges to NASS Committees on FERMA so that they will be on the same page with it.
Earlier, the Managing Director/CEO FERMA, Engr. Chukwuemeka Agbasi, during his presentation of the 2023/ 2024 Budget performance and defence said, the roads selected for the 2024 capital budget proposal were based on equitable distribution according to the Six (6) geopolitical zones of the country.
He further added that the 2024 budget included the rollover of some projects with completion periods exceeding the 2023 fiscal year to ensure 100% execution.
A total of N77,390,766,140 (Seventy-Seven Billion, Three Hundred and Ninety Million, Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Thousand, One Hundred and Forty Naira) proposal was presented by the Managing Director/CEO to the Joint Committees of the Senate and the House.
The breakdown includes; total personnel – N4,081,099,533 (Four Billion, Eighty-One Million, Ninety-Nine Thousand, Five Hundred and Thirty-Three Naira); total overhead – N22,027,209,696 (Twenty-two Billion, Twenty-Seven Million, Two Hundred and Nine Thousand, Six Hundred and Ninety-Six Naira); total recurrent – N26,108,309,229 (Twenty-six Billion, One Hundred and Eight Million, Three Hundred and Nine Thousand, Two Hundred and Twenty-Nine Naira, while total Capital which is meant for the maintenance of all the over 36,000km of federal Roads is – N51,282,456,911 (Fifty-One Billion, Two Hundred and Eighty-Two Million, Four Hundred and Fifty-Six Thousand, Nine Hundred and Eleven Naira Only.
