Senate to scrap over 400 MDAs in 2023 over low revenue generation

The time for low revenue generation by any government agency is over as the Senate considers scrapping over 400 out of the 541 Federal Government’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies in the country.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Olamilekan Adeola, announced the development on Wednesday, September 14, 2022.

The committee recently started meeting with heads of MDAs to review the revenue drive for the implementation of the proposed N19.76 trillion 2023.

According to Olamilekan, Orosanye panel recommended the retention of 106 of the MDAs.

He said the retention of the MDAs is based on their capacity to generate revenue.

The senator said this after the Director General of the National Bio-safety Management Agency, Dr. Rufus Ebegba, had made a presentation to the committee on low revenue generation by the agency.

During his presentation, Ebegba said the NBMA has generated only N2 million this year as against the N5 million it usually generated on yearly basis.

He added that out of the N2 .5billion appropriated for the capital budget this year, only N1.3billion was released.

Angered by the report, Olamilekan said it was unacceptable for an agency spending N500 million a year outside capital projects to be remitting N5 million into government coffers.

He said those MDAs that are not meeting up with their revenue generation target would be scrapped as recommended by the Orosanye panel.

He said, “There is no way of stopping the implementation of the Orosanye panel because of the economic situation at hand in the country.

“The government needs revenue for impactful budget implementation, particularly in the area of project execution, and can no longer afford to be dolling money to MDAs without corresponding returns on yearly basis.

“We in the Senate are in support of the implementation of the Orosanye-led panel report to save the economy from self-inflicted bleeding.”

The committee was further infuriated by a submission from the Managing Director of Sokoto Rima River Basin Development Authority, Engineer Buhari Bature Mohammed, whose agency generated only N7 million after collecting N7 billion as funding for the year 2022.

Following Mohammed’s presentation, the committee agreed that the Orosanye report should be applied on agencies with yearly low revenue generation.