• Ministry’s Spokesman Denies Such Spending
While fiscal resources in Lagos State are under increasing pressure, one recent procurement shock raises urgent governance concerns: the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, responsible for regulation of the environment and water-resources, has spent over a billion naira on rescue/emergency equipment, an area which falls outside its statutory remit.

A peruse of the budget document performance for quarter two and three revealed that N1,158,161,994.30 was appropriated for the purchase of an Emergency Rescue Equipment. In the quarter two budget performance document, the ministry spent N1.051b on the equipment while the quarter three budget performance document revealed that additional N205,832.60 was spent on the same item. At the end of quarter three, the budget performance document revealed that about N1.052 billion had been spent of the N1.158 billion appropriated for the equipment.

The third quarter budget performance revealed that between quarter one to three, 90.8 per cent of the allocated fund had been spent with N106,228 left unspent as at the end of third quarter.

Yet, all the agencies that have responsibilities for rescue and safety in Lagos State are primary domiciled in the Ministry of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Relations. Some of the agencies with mandate for rescue, safety and emergency operations especially at the state level include the Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service, the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency and the Lagos State Safety Commission.

Across Lagos, many communities are littered with huge waste and refuse that have continued to be dent on the esthetics of Lagos among other environmental issues begging for funding.

When the Director Public Affairs, Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, Mr. Kunle Adeshina was contacted for clarification on why the ministry spent such huge amount on emergency equipment in the face of huge environment challenges the state government is grappling with, he initially said: “I have made enquiries from my two permanent secretaries in the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources. We don’t have the record of any such approvals. Please check your assertions or the claims of your sources very well.”

But when he was told that the information is in the budget performance report of the state government, he promised to get a feed-back from the ministry’s budget officer.

Thereafter, he said: “Our planning officers have said our ministry did not handle any such contract to the tune of N1 billion. They are not aware of any such.” He was yet to respond as at press time.

The poser was the statutory mandate of the ministry to allocate such a large sum to procure emergency/rescue equipment, given that this function typically falls under the agencies under the Ministry of Special Duties and Intergovernmental relations. Also, how does the ministry justify the budget priority of this equipment procurement compared to other competing environmental mandates, such as drainage/flood control, waste management, pollution monitoring.