Nigerians were outraged when it was discovered that former Lagos Governor, Tunde Fashola spent #78 million of taxpayers funds to develop his own website.
Now another one of his political colleagues wants to beat his record by spending a whopping #795 million to build a website.
Former Ekiti state governor, Kayode Fayemi who is now Minister of Solid Minerals is no stranger to controversy. As a governor he was alleged to have spent #50 million to purchase a bed for government house.
In the 2016 budget documents, his ministry is budgeting the relatively colossal sum of #795 million to update a website.
According to a budget analysis, it was discovered that Fayemi would be spending such amount on website upgrade.
Amongst other budgeted plans for the Ministry of Solid Mineral Resources, the website upgrade caught the eyes of THE HERALD.
The sum allocated for website update is about N200million lower than what was budgeted for the development of the Solid Mineral Sector in the same Ministry.
Minister of mines and steel development, kayode Fayemi, had revealed that that the nation’s solid mineral sector was allocated only N1billion in the 2015 budget.
He further revealed that of the N1billion, only N352million was released to the ministry and its several agencies.
Speaking at the inaugural media briefing in Abuja on Monday, December 21, Fayemi said over the past 5 years,the total capital allocation to the ministry and its agencies in the federal budget had been less than N10billion.
Fayemi lamented that “equally access to finance has been practically non- existent from the banking industry. Indeed as at today,the banking sectors exposure to the sector is less than 1 per cent of its total portfolio which demonstrates the limited focus on the sector,” he said.
As a means of addressing these challenges the minister assured that he would seek for funding similar to the NIRSAL funds in the nation’s agriculture sector to help in funding exploration and other mining activities.
According to him, based on current data, Nigeria’s solid minerals sector makes up about 0.34 per cent of the gross domestic product(GDP) adding that based on current official exchange rates,the mining sector
contributes N400billion value to the economy.
